The Theatricality of the Plague

There is a direct correspondence between the theatre and the plague, St Augustine argues in The City of God. While the plague kills without destroying the organs, the theatre makes changes in the mind and the body of the individuals but without killing. We are all currently exposed to the power of this change; theatre is the tool to observe how these changes are produced and in what they consist of. To observe these changes, it is necessary to extend our experience of theatre beyond the limits of entertainment and representation. I shall present two examples of theatrical moments that have happened during this pandemic that shows theatre’s power to make a difference: the Urbi et Orbi which is the blessing by the pope and the ongoing protests in the US and in the rest of the world. However, I would like to start from plagues from the past through the study of manuscripts.

Emma Hardiman in her article ‘Medieval Materiality: the Multisensory Performance in Late-Medieval Manuscripts’ points out the theatricality in the use of manuscripts during plagues of the Middle Ages. She analyses pages of manuscripts whose illuminated images are peculiarly deteriorated because of their being repeatedly touched and kissed while praying. Through the haptic experience of these manuscripts, the readers could experience God who was believed to live in those pages which were treated as though they were alive. Indeed, once they were alive, given they are made of organic materials — for example, the pages are made of calfskin — they became alive again by absorbing the readers’ prayers who survived until nowadays in the marks they left on the surface of the manuscripts. This power of the manuscript was valued during the Black Death during the 14th Century since believers kept praying not only for being saved by having direct contact with God but also for surviving in the form of marks left on the surface of the manuscript.

Even during the ongoing pandemic, the Catholic church has given us a powerful example of its theatricality. It is 27th March 2020, the pope is alone on the rainy St Peter’s Square, walking slowly towards the Basilica where he will celebrate Ubi et Orbi – a blessing to the city of Rome and the whole world. While the Pope walks over the stairs to reach the parvis, we hear chants from the wide-open Basilica overlooking the Square which gives the impression of having transformed into a huge musical instrument. There is a moment of silence, the Pope starts the blessing and is followed by an acapella excerpt from the Gospel by Saint Mark which resonates across the empty Square.

Miracle of the Cross at the Bridge of S. Lorenzo - Giovanni Bellini

After speaking again, the Pope turns towards the main door of the Basilica on whose left-side there is the icon called Salus Populi Romani which is traditionally attributed to Luke the Evangelist, and on the right, there is the Crocifisso di San Marcello, a wooden 14th-century crucifix, which is believed to be miraculous since it is the one which was carried in a public procession throughout Rome to calm down the plague in the 16th Century. The power and significance of this ceremony cannot be overstated.

After the celebration, an article by the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero announced that the priceless crucifix was damaged because of lack of proper protection from the rain, leading to indignation across social media. One of the main critiques was that even nowadays the church thinks to solve a problem through prayers and hope, threatening, by the way, the artistic heritage—leaving a wooden 14th century crucifix under the rain was seen as a threat for the artistic heritage, for example.

I think that the Urbi et Orbi overcame any dichotomy between faith and science since the power of this moment consisted exactly in reminding each one of us that we are all humans independently from any other contingent factor. For a moment, it was unimportant to expose the crucifix to such risk because a statue and an image — even if not any statues and images — may have an active power over reality. Manuscripts were given life by dint of prayers, just as much the pouring rain endowed the fragile wood of the crucifix with life.

One of the consequences of the choice to expose the crucifix to the rain was to unravel once again a conflict between science and faith, the rational and the spiritual. The Western thought is shaped through the logic of dialectics where there is always a thesis and an antithesis. If theatre, in the first place, highlights these conflicts to the point of making them explode, on the other hand, I believe it has the power of thinking beyond them. I would like to quote the following excerpt from “The Theatre and the Plague” in The Theatre and its Double by Antonin Artaud (page 20) which explains further this connection between the theatre and the plague.

The plague takes dormant images, latent disorder and suddenly carries them to the point of the most extreme gestures. […] Theatre restores all our dormant conflicts and their powers, giving these powers names we acknowledge as signs. Theatre is like the plague […] because it is a revelation, urging forwards the exteriorization of a latent undercurrent of cruelty through which all the perversity of which the mind is capable, whether in a person or a nation, becomes localized.

According to national trends in police killings in the US in the past seven years more than one thousand people have been killed each year and black victims’ rate is three times higher than victims of other ethnicities. I suggest that given such a huge problem the most important factor among the others that triggered the protests was exactly the power of the pandemic which brought this conflict to life, making it active and visible to the world.

Before 25 May 2020, the conflict was only latent since it was known and discussed but it has not generated such a reaction until the current global circumstances. Now that the conflict has been finally unravelled it has released cruelty. However, considering that protesting is essential, violence is counterproductive since it makes the dialectic of power even stronger. Such power is the biopolitical power that the state exercises over the bodies of the citizens and violently abuses minorities.

Many other countries have joined the protests because these kinds of conflicts are common worldwide. I would like to make another example of an analogous event among the many other possible only because took place very recently on 31st May 2020 may not be as well known: a unarmed autistic Palestinian man was shot in Jerusalem by the Israeli police because he was wrongly suspected of carrying a weapon. This kind of violence happens daily and if we want it to stop it, it is not enough to affirm that all black lives matter, we should instead affirm that there is a black Palestinian minorated life inside each one of us and the theatre is what can help us to become-minority, overcoming our privileges and these conflicts which will otherwise keep growing stronger.

Pope Francis venerating the crucifix during the prayer on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica, 27 March 2020 (Vatican Media)

WORDS BY LUCAMATTEO ROSSI