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So a lobster walks into a Live Arts show �
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
So a lobster walks into a Live Arts show �
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| Lobster (left) and man |
| Photo | Brian Howard |
So last night i went to Rodrigo Garcia's ACCIDENS (matar para comer), you know, the show with the live lobster, the one whose parenthetical title translates as "to kill, to eat," the one that PETA was going to protest, the one where allegedly unspeakable things happen to a lobster.
Well, I'll be honest and say that I felt a little, um, oversold? There were uncomfortable moments of the piece, which began with performer Juan Loriente reaching into a bucket, pulling out a live lobster and suspending it from a wire in the middle of the space.
After Loriente affixed a microphone to the wriggling crustacean, you could hear its heartbeat, and its clicking and clunking as it attempted very much in vain to free itself from its bondage. After something of a near-death throe, Loriente bathed the lobster in bottled water, which perked the guy up a bit. But this second wind lasted only a few moments. Loriente grabbed a pair of scissors, which he used to clip the rubber bands around the lobster's claws. He then gave the scissors to the lobster, which held them in its right claw for a few minutes before dropping them.
More, including the show's gory conclusion, after the jump
After breathing some cigarette smoke into the lobster's face, Loriente unhooked the lobster, brought it over to a table, lifted a giant knife, chopped off each of the still apparently living lobster's claws, split the lobster lengthwise then put both halves and both claws on a hot electic skillet. (Four audience members walked out after this.) As the shellfish cookoed and Loriente poured himself several glasses of wine, a film — set to Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and with alternate, subtitled lyrics that describe a man's near death experience in a car crash and the 20-some deaths he's witnessed on the highway — played off to the side.
At the end, I guess you're supposed to juxtapose the revulsion you feel watching a slimy lobster — destined to be a meai in just a few minutes — writhe in amplified agony, with your own mortality. Are your feelings of disgust overcome by your feelings of empathy and/or self preservation? Is your sympathy with the crawling fish, with the man who survived the car crash or with yourself?
The Sunday performance seemed to fall short in that, while the lobster's struggle was somewhat difficult to watch it was not, at least not for this desensitized cultural observer, particularly excruciating. I hear that in post-show discussions it is revealed that Philly lobsters have not been putting up the kind of fight lobsters in other cities have — which is to say: spunkier lobster, better show.
The biggest questions I'm left with is: What does it say about me that I left the show thinking things like "I wish he'd have tortured the lobster more" and "I don't really like lobster, but I think it smelled pretty good grilled."
Read Joel Tannenbaum's review on CP's Fringe blog.
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| Lobster (foreground) and man |
| Photo | Brian Howard |
Actually it was Nick Cave and Shane McGowan covering "Wonderful World." I think Nick Cave would have shared your disappointment at the lobster's relatively quick death. And Shane McGowan would have been bummed that no one gave him any of the wine.
Speaking of which,on Saturday, the actor didn't even get through a full glass. It sounds like by the second show he was drinking much more steadily. Do you think the show is wearing on him?
According to the Live Arts catalog, the creator of this piece, Rodrigo Garcia, was once a butcher before starting his own theatre company. (Me, I was just a lowly ice cream truck driver.) The central statement, quoted in the catalog and projected on a giant wall in the Ice Box space, is "...One has to have a lot of imagination--and I lack it--to tremble in the face of death while opening a can of meatballs at home in the kitchen." Nice semantic trick, that. Reference what should cause us to tremble, then undercut it by saying, oh, I don't have what it takes to actually tremble.
I was there on Saturday. I didn't hear a heartbeat; the lobster was dead by the time the water trick was tried; and the actor didn't put the scissors in the lobster's claws. Not that any of that mattered. This was a soggy, half-baked excuse of a show. If this was supposed to be a "dramatic deconstruction of consumer culture in the industrialized world," as the Live Arts guide tells us, then please tell me why Garcia, the FORMER BUTCHER, used a crustacean to illustrate his point?
OK, fishing is an industry, too. Demand has never been higher, and aquatic life is being squeezed. Our seas our being emptied one Red Lobster (and Costco and Safeway) at a time. But, seriously, the creator of ACCIDENS is a butcher, he references a fatal car crash (dead meat), and dwells on a can of MEATBALLS, and the best he can do is have his actor kill a crustacean? It doesn't compute.
At the very least he should have killed a chicken. If he had balls, he would've butchered a steer.
The Ice Box is enormous; there's more than enough room to do the business.
If the piece is taking on consumer culture, isn't it fair to say that lobsters play a relatively small role in American consumerism...compared to the chicken and pig and cow factories that dominate "farming" in our country? And, not to be too literalist, but meatballs are made of the flesh of cows...I think...certainly not crustaceans or any other kind of seafood (unless maybe at Whole Foods). Garcia takes the easy way out by presenting death that's not all that dramatic, and not really connected to his thesis statement.
Halfstandin: You and I know both know that it's not about balls. If Garcia came to America with a performance that made spectacle out of torturing and killing a live steer or even, say, a rabbit â regardless of whether or not the rest of the show involved eating said animal for dinner â he'd be locked up. Yet he gets to kill a lobster without much outrage.
I'm wondering how much of the choice of sacrificial animal was calculated, came down to what he could get away with. The ol' "it's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings" trope.
I cannot believe that this show is getting so much attention and press. It is outrageous that anyone could be entertained by someone killing another living thing whether it is a lobster or a dog!
I think the answer's in the question your outrage, Felice. It's getting attention because it's a show that revolves around killing a lobster.
Ok Brian I understand but my question is "What has the entertainment business turned into?" We are outraged by dog fights but not by some guy who calls himself an "artist" and pulls apart a half dead lobster. There are quality shows in the Fringe - this type of entertainment, in my opinion, is not one of them. I would not attend if the ticket was free!
Next year, I am going to put up a show in which I take a bath and masturbate in the water and that will show that we are a self-indulgent society that is wasting our natural resources by polluting them with our precious bodily fluids.
Or maybe I will just sit there for an hour and stare at the audience which will prove how we live in a meaningless world where nothing happens that is meaningful.
Or maybe I will just stay at home along with all the other 99% of the people who avoid the theatre like it was a herpes convention because of
b-s like this.
Felice: I'm guessing that if you asked your question of the director he would say something along the lines of "Who told you this was supposed to be entertaining? This is art."
I don't pretend to know what's in Garcia's mind or heart, but I suspect that as a man who was once a butcher, the idea of life's preciousness or lack thereof is something he's pondered at length. And I'm guessing that he wants you to think about that. Why are you outraged? Yes, the lobster suffered. Then the lobster was killed. Then the man cooked and ate the lobster, which is something I'm told normal people like to do. Why are we outraged at the death of a lobster when people eat dead lobsters all the time?
I don't know that we're supposed to *enjoy* the lobster dying. I think we're supposed to think about why we don't enjoy a lobster dying, but we can then enjoy a dead lobster.
Now that just sounds defeatist, Toni. Whether or not one enjoys it, watching a lobster fight for its life is interesting. Shocking, perhaps. Maybe even revolting. But certainly interesting.
Well, as my Mother always said "there is a lid for every pot" I guess the same saying applies to "art"
Inhumanities happen in everyday life; this artist is simply performing that fact.
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