Postcard from Craiova

Hello Insert name here

Wish you were here! Sorry about the generic message! I am only allowed one email from my cell, so I thought I'd use it to do one of those round-robins you get at Christmas off people you barely know, but their kids are doing so well at Cambridge and their jam was such a fucking success at the local fete. 

The Vile Arts arrived in Craiova at five on Sunday morning! Mad Cyril was sent out to find absinthe, while Ghost Face Critic and Gareth K started an argument about whether it is racist to say that Cyril's accent is not Scottish. Luckily, everyone quickly fell asleep, only to be woken up at seven (a.m.!!!!! LOLZ) by Cyril coming back with a bottle of absinthe and three Orthodox priests who performed a selection of polyphonic chants for St George. 

Team Vile sent Criticulous out to represent at the Europe Theatre Prize. Sadly, even though he had written a speech, he did not make it onto the National Theatre of Scotland's panel, because he got arrested for throwing a flag off the roof. Quoth Mad Cyril - 'That's usually my mind of caper'!!!!

Meanwhile, Gareth K found out that the artistic director of the NTS, Laurie Samson, has a connection to Wessex. He's a gurt big talent.

In other news, Ghost Face attended a three hours Easter service inside (well, technically outside, Orthodox liturgy fans), and Cyril blagged his way into a wedding reception at the hotel. He did a few turns of traditional folk dancing ('pretty basic group-circle action,' he reported back!!!) before the groom suddenly realised that he didn't actually have an old friend from Glasgow who did not speak a word of Romanian but kept smiling whenever anyone spoke to him...

Katharsis @ DeadEndConversations.com

I think that I had a cheeky katharsis the other night at the opera. I can say it was involuntary - I spent the first two acts wondering if I could leave  -and that it involved physiological symptoms. 

Fans of Hellenistic philosophy will recognise katharsis as Aristotle's word for the audience experience at a good tragedy. Luckily, Aristotle's extant writing don't define the word that well, so it's open for argument. Leon Golden (Aristotle on Tragic and Comic Mimesis, 1992) has a whole chapter on it. Like Sifakis'  chapter on the same word, it's a run down and a running down of competing ideas, beginning with the popular medical interpretation by Jacob Bernays.

Tighten your seatbelts. I am going to join in and list all these amazing interpretations. Rather than give my own opinion at the end, like a proper scholar, I'll just say now that 'purging' is close enough, and that gives enough information for individuals to think about it, without all the cross-referencing and learned analysis. 

Katharsis is like puking your guts up

In 1857 - well after the enlightenment, so it is really trust-worthy  - Bernays said Aristotle was always banging on about katharsis, and it is a medical word, and so it's about the process of healing, featuring a good spew of excess bile. Golden counters that the vomit and shit school ignore that when Aristotle mentions it in The Politics, he is talking about education, not tragedy, and it's more appropriate to have a medical metaphor involving bodily fluids when kids are involved.

In The Politics, having a good emotional puke is good way of getting a balanced soul. He even mentions the right kind of music to induce it. Bernays, apparently, calls katharsis a necessary cure (this leads Sifakis to get way too literal, asking what the illness might be that requires a purging cure. Frankly, if you are asking why people have an excess of emotion that needs an outlet, you want to get out more. Or read Facebook, and all those posts about David Cameron having a good lie to the public. Then you'll see...).

No, the whole fish supper doesn't come back up

Getting away from the buckets of sick with all bits of fear and pity in them, like sweetcorn on a shit, Milton off Paradise Lost had a theory. You can read about it in Golden or Sifakis, they cover the same ground. To be honest, there's not much difference, only Milton and his followers think the purgation of katharsis aims to achieve a mean of emotion, while Bernays and the gang see it as a complete emptying of the emotions, like when you are really sick and end up spitting bile in the toilet because breakfast is already swimming with the fishes.

Actually, it's nothing to do with spewing

But Golden keeps going. He cites H. Otte and G. Else, who call katharsis the defining characteristic of tragedy: if you don't get some, what you are watching is not tragedy. Otte adds that katharsis happens not to the audience but to the plot: that is, it is about purging the story of 'possible moral pollution'. Else piles in with a more cerebral twist: the audience recognise that the protagonist in a tragedy (who has probably done something like fuck his mum) was ignorant in his behaviour and was basically a good bloke. It's the old 'why bad things happen to good people' trope, only this time, it has a specific emotional response which is triggered by an intellectual recognition. 

At least that katharsis doesn't get all over my shoes. 

That's Enough

There's plenty more, and I'll get back onto it another time - just like Aristotle, when the going gets tough, I'll say you can read about it later: most of the problems with interpretation came about because he promised, in The Politics, to deal with katharsis more fully in The Poetics, but he probably got distracted by whatever they had instead of Facebook in the fourth century BC and didn't. The way I used katharsis in the first paragraph is a good example of the problem. It's a synonym for a 'peak theatrical experience'. That's terrible scholarship. 

Glitch/Lamar/Arika/Reasons

Doom Chat

One of the most controversial announcements at this year's Fringe has been the appointment of Dr Doom as 'critic at large' by the VileArts. We are delighted to have the CEO of VileArts, Gareth K Vile, with us today to talk about this bold strategy.

Thank you for joining us, Gareth. If we can get down to the basics... Dr Doom. Why? Just... why?

Well, Doom has got many of the qualities that I would look for in a critic. He's bold, opinionated, and he speaks about himself in the third person. It lends his theories a bit more credence, pretending that they are more objective. He got in contact with us- and face it: who is going to say no to the one true ruler of Latveria?

I can see how there might be other pressures on you to give Doom a role, but isn't he more famous for other things?  Like failing to conquer the world and being made to look stupid by Reed Richards out of the Fantastic Four?

I think Doom's interest in criticism comes from his rivalry with Richards. It's a little known fact that the Fantastic Four have been providing dramaturgical support for The Wooster Group for the past decade - Reed's flexibility is in his mind as much as his limbs - and Doom wants to show that he has got the intellectual chops. He told me that he has conquered science and magic, and only the arts are left.

We know that he has some beautiful paintings in his palace...

Unsurprisingly, he is a big fan of Wagner and the whole 'total theatre' scene. But his real love is in cross-platform work. One of the big advantages he has is that he is able to go unnoticed in a  crowd. That mask of his ensures his anonymity.

I didn't think he took it off.

He doesn't. But you can never tell whether it is him of one of his doombots. After we heard that The Herald was employing Multiple Man to save money on critics this Fringe, we felt the VileArts needed that edge.

So, do you have any other big names lined up?

We were hoping to get Namor The Submariner to cover cabaret, but he is insisting that he invented Boylesque by strutting around in his speedos for fifty years.