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Murderer Hope fo Women / The Philosopher's Stone

Production credits

MURDERER HOPE OF WOMEN / THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Premiered University Theatre, December 1998
Production Credits

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How can a murderer be the hope of women - or of men, for that matter? And what have hope and murder of women to do with art? In his memoir Oskar Kokoschka, who was known more for his visual art than for his theatrical experiments, tells us that "art gives renewed hope as often as the world fails" and insists that the answer is not in words per se but in the experience of the performance. Originally staged in Vienna in 1909, Murderer Hope of Women is generally regarded as the first Expressionist play. Its obsession with sex and death is expressed in grand gestures and archaic language, while its physical risks, and its chants and screams, so vividly presaged the theories and plays of Antonin Artaud that it could almost be called a paradigm of the Theatre of Cruelty.

Balanced on the knife's edge between Eros and Thanatos, love and death, Murderer Hope of Women embodies Kokoschka's fear of, and desire for, what he called 'the female principle' whose erotic advance causes the breakdown of rational control and patriarchal order. According to theatre critic Christopher Innes: "The play's aim is to open the spectator's subconscious ... by presenting archetypal sexual patterns of domination and destruction." Like the later work of Artaud, the point of Kokoschka's play is "to open the spectators' minds by breaking down conventional responses through outrage."

Kokoschka's 1909 production was intended as blasphemy; he called it a "gesture of defiance" against the bourgeois audiences of his time. For the performance, he shaved his head, and his actors "hurled themselves into their parts, as if acting for dear life" emerging from their ordeal "bloodied and bruised." The audience responded with a chorus of catcalls throughout, stomping their feet, scuffling with each other and brandishing chairs. Order had to be restored by the police, and Kokoschka and his company barely escaped being arrested for breaching the peace. Subsequent reviews called Kokoschka a 'criminal', a 'degenerate' and a 'corrupter of youth.'

Following two decades after Murderer premiered, Antonin Artaud proposed a theatre which would be, like the plague, "a crisis which is resolved by death or cure." The Philosopher's Stone is both a dream play and a harlequinade, a pantomime in the tradition of Commedia dell'arte. As in the Kokoschka play, in the end, love is murder.






Reviews

The Philosopher's Stone / Murderer Hope of Women
Reviewed by Ron Rodger, Theatre News, February 1999

Kokoschka, Artaud plays presented by the Free Theatre
Reviewed by Michele Burstein, The Press, December 1998

Grotesquely Funny
Article, by Anna Dunbar, The Press​

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  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • A brief history...
    • Jarry, Ubu, Pataphysics and Free Theatres
    • Manifestos and Writings
    • Who We Are
    • Shirley Horrocks documentary
    • Training and Devising
    • Home, Space and Design
    • Praise and Awards
  • Te Puna Toi
    • Past Te Puna Toi Projects
    • Artists in Residence
  • UPCOMING
    • The Tempest
    • Woyzeck
  • EDUCATION
    • Kidsfest and Holiday Programmes
    • Schools Workshops
    • Adult workshops
  • ARCHIVE
    • Productions 1979 - present >
      • The Axe
      • Endgame
      • Digitising Performance
      • Erewhon: Over the Range
      • A Summer Night's Dream
      • How Dare You
      • A Winter's Tale
      • Ubu Nights >
        • Past Ubu Nights >
          • Ma Ubu Night
          • Ubu Through the Looking Glass
          • Ubu in Wonderland Ubu Night
          • Frankenstein Ubu Night
          • Casablanca Ubu Night
          • Faust Ubu Night
          • Not Hamlet Ubu Night
          • Punk Ubu Night
          • The Art of the Deal Ubu Night
          • Crossroads Ubu Night
          • Ubu Shows Us the Way to Brecht's Whiskey Bar
          • The Devil and the Blues Ubu Night
          • Bowie Ubu Night
          • Warhol Ubu Night
          • Berlin Kabarette
          • Beat Ubu Night
          • Twin Peaks Ubu Night
          • David Lynch Ubu Night
          • Kafka Ubu Night
          • Tango Ubu Night
          • Ubu Ubu Night
          • Lovecraft Ubu Night
      • Ars Acustica
      • Alice
      • The Black Rider
      • Frankenstein
      • The Mauricio Kagel Project
      • Te Puna Toi 2015: Footprints/Tapuwae
      • Kafka's Amerika
      • The Soldier's Tale
      • Canterbury Tales
      • I Sing the Body Electric
      • Hereafter
      • Passion, Pulse and Power
      • The Earthquake in Chile
      • Doctor Faustus
      • The Marvellous Corricks >
        • Corricks - Credits
      • Distraction Camp
      • Remake
      • Ella and Susn
      • Free Theatre - 25 years and counting...
      • Faust Chroma
      • Enigma Emmy Goering/Nico Sphinx of Ice
      • Faust Feast
      • Diana Down Under
      • Philoctetes >
        • Production Credits - Piloctetes
      • Fantasia
      • Christmas Shopping
      • Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
      • Achternbusch in the Antipodes
      • Caucasian Chalk Circle
      • Samson Airline
      • Kabarett Kabul
      • Footprints/Tapuwae
      • Last Days of Mankind
      • Medea
      • Bakkhai / Diotek
      • Krapp's Last Tape
      • Murderer Hope of Women / The Philosopher's Stone
      • Comrade Savage
      • Love on a Bicycle
      • Resolution Island
      • Songs for the Judges
      • Crusoe
      • Oedipus Rex/Oedipus at Colonus
      • States of Shock
      • Empire Builders
      • Yes
      • Power
      • Robinson Crusoe: Or I THat Was Born To Be My Own Destroyer
      • Newsbites
      • Dumped in Space
      • MedeaMaterial
      • Salome
      • Electra
      • Sphinx and Strawmen
      • The Girl Who Sings Waterfalls
      • Hamletmachine
      • Oresteia
      • A Respectable Wedding
      • Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
      • Double Act and Postponeless
      • Cloudkiwiland
      • Preversions
      • G.O.P. Helpomatic
      • The Mortal Pleasure of Wander Lust
      • Red Cross & Takeaway
      • Lulu Earth Spirit
      • The Meeting
      • Action / Tongues
      • Cowboy Mouth
      • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
      • A Letter from L
      • Dinosaurs and All the Rubbish / The Hunting of the Snark
      • The Ride Across Lake Constance
      • Electra
      • In Three Minds
      • The Rapist Over Suzannah
      • 1984: The Future Is Now
      • Leonce and Lena
      • Kabernette
      • The Joffongract
      • My Foot, My Tutor
      • King Lear
      • King Ubu
      • Jazz Cellar Dada / Heavy Metal Cabaret
      • Kabarett
      • Black Cat Cabaret
      • The Gas Heart/Ox on the Roof/The Mirror Wardrobe One Fine Evening
      • Round Dance
      • Woyzeck
      • Make-up Ground down / Texts for Decomposition
      • Court Case: Arts Centre vs Free Theatre
    • Image Gallery 1979 - present
    • TV3 Clips
    • Selected Reviews
  • SUPPORT
  • BLOG