Potlatch

Reaching For Recovery (And release…) I am less confused but still very cautious in writing this. In addition, I imagine that this goes further than what I have been thinking for some time; and even contemplating: strategies around recovery. I’m in no doubt that catharsis as contemplated and considered by the Greeks and Brecht meant not only liberation of feeling or release but perhaps recovery. Although now I do think the Greeks meant cleanse in aiming for that great theatrical tenet. I suppose it might be difficult to place cleanse and recover on an equitable plane…or is it? This really is about going to see Lara Foot Newton’s “Reach” at the Baxter and realizing what I have been struggling with in South African theatre for some time. This question of catharsis; there has been a dissipation of it, and instead as I have often witnessed complacency and an even an urgency to frame and concretize but not just move us because the making of the work arrives with intentions of aesthetics rather than principles of the heart. In addition, more than often the aesthetics are wrong, creaky, and awkward and our heart – well we just forget about that – forgetting it is the emotion that might emit emotion. That’s what happened to me in “Reach” - ok lets just forget about the back story or reasons for writing the play but think about the moment and in the moment there was a return to heart, reaching for recovery, a plea, a testimony of imbued concern and pathos and entwined in this: there was an catharsis. Of course, I could continue to complain about the committed tendency for South African’s to emphasize how it will be television that will save us; the reconciled nation crowded around the box rather than a fire, watching 2010, broadcast as thousands of dancing pixilated figures scoring goals and everything will be alright even if the television is not even turned on, oh well we can imagine it is… Nonetheless, my experience I am suggesting while watching “Reach” was about catharsis and perhaps finding implicit ways in returning to it in order to find release… and recovery…