[-empyre-] from a distance

[O Danylyuk]

Thanks for your discussions that stir so many thoughts for me. I'd like to
add some of my observations. I wish for the theatrical responses that has a
power to crystallise the matters, to make things more clear, because
despite the postmodern scepticism I still want to make sense of this world.
The subject of war actually renew my interest in realism in performance
practice. As Erikson stated the one needs protagonist and antagonist
represented with some plausibility and understanding to make the argument.
It might be dismissed as a naive claim, yet from my observation, also
supported by personal experience of Maidan protests in Ukraine and the
interviewees' statements about the war experience it seems that the pure
attraction to violence is a rare course for the recruits to get involved
into fighting. There is a strong ideological impetus, mainly to do
something important, something worse risking you life for... This ideology
or faith can be completely misguided, evoking parable of blind leading the
blind, though I usually try  to understand the roots of the phenomenon
 before demonising it beyond any comprehension. The 'empathy with the
enemy' is a hard strategy to conceive. But is there any other  route for
negotiation, the alternative for war against war approach? I came across
the interview with the former chief rabbi Jonathan  Sacks ( Spectator,
November issue), which suggests that in order to separate religion and
power ( when religion moved from power to influence) as Judaism and
Christianity in Europe have done in the different times in history, Islam
has to wrestle with it's 'hard' texts. In his view this process 'happens 15
centuries into the history of Judaism and roughly 15 century into history
of Christianity, which explains why it hasn't happened within Islam yet'.
I allow myself one more quote:
People want to be able to say I am religious but I feel that my faith, the
leaders of my faith, have done that hard work in talking us from an age
where most people lived in close proximity to people who are like them and
have done the hard work in translation that to an age where we have to live
with more difference in one mile of work [...] than a 17th century
anthropologies would have seen in a lifetime.


-- 
Olga Danylyuk
Director, designer
PhD candidate, Central School of Speech and Drama
London, UK
+447971341395
+380664086948
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