International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle

Declaration of Love to the Theatre

Joseph Angel Gomez

Documentation des Arts du Spectacle dans une Société en Mutation / Documentation of Performing Arts in a Changing Society

Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts
19ème Congrès International, Lisbonne 7-11 septembre 1991 / 19th International Congress, Lisbon 7-11 September 1992
Ed.: José Carlos Alvarez. Lisboa : 1994, p. 25-34

"Joseph Angel is the only theorist of theater that I know of who proclaims the death of theater and plans the organization of Theater Congresses around the world for twenty years, from 1991 to 2011.
This attitude so radical and methodical confuses me with admiration."
Patrice Pavis

1

Theater was my first love. The first toy I remember having - according to my mother it was the toy I always fell asleep with when I was in my crib - was a musical box with the marionettes of Harlequin and Colombine who danced to the rhythm of the music.
When I was a young boy, I believed I was a grand stage prompter like God, whose work consisted in reading or inventing the roles of others.
I would've liked being a god, but destiny played me a cruel trick and gave me the part of a small devil. But, I would've liked to have been able to make others happy. That is why, had I had the opportunity to create the world, the first thing that would've occurred to me would have been to create two marvelous characters such as Harlequin and Colombine. And, instead of making of this world in which we have been given to live in a Greek tragedy, I would have made a farce.

If at some time you should happen to pass by a circus in which a tight-rope walker disguised as Colombine performs, I ask you to please inform me immediately because, since my zodiac sign is Harlequin, I have an irrepressible tendency to fall in love with tight-rope walkers who play their life at roulette, that is to say, that they take risks. What I love most in the world is theater and what I love most about theater is the risk. I enjoy walking on the slack rope, at the edge of a precipice. Like Don Juan, who drugs himself with love, I have a congenital tendency to drug myself of theater. I confess, if I were to die, I would love to die of an overdose of Commedia dell'Arte or, to say the same, of an overdose of beauty and laughter.

2

I made my debut as actor in the Theater of Snails. I remember my childhood as a courtesan party, a theatrical party to which I arrived mounted on my imaginary horse. I entered the living room of my house, trotting on my broom which later I used to hit the floor three times announcing the beginning of the performance.
At the beginning and at the end of my Theater of Snails, I always saluted the audience by taking off my musketeer's hat with a bow of reverence, as if I were at court in Versailles, imitating Molière's gesture as Sganarelle.
My mother would build me small theaters made of cardboard and in these theaters we used snails instead of actors.
Sometimes, I would glue small pieces of paper to the snail's back and a fascinating thing would occur: the characters on stage would begin to move, acting out the scene! In representations of the Auto-Sacramentales of the Golden Age of Spanish Theater they used chariots to carry the people. Well, in my first theater I used snails as if they were chariots. One snail carried Harlequin's silhouette, another Columbine's, and yet another, Punchinello. I acted as Narrator or Stage Prompter for these characters, dressed up as Sganarelle. The snail is an animal sufficiently slow and docile so that I was able to act out the voices and tell the story as they moved across the stage. It was my mother who with this game taught me to love the theater. She would send me to the San Francisco garden to capture snails on rainy days and would make the decorations with a sewing machine, rugs and tapestries with motifs and themes from theater.
Although my mother never acted professionally, she was a great tragedienne who enjoyed immensely the theater of snails, the same or more than I. I could go on and on, adding countless other things that made up the pan-theatrical world in which I lived my childhood. All this led to my concept of Post-Theater. Everything to me was a theater, all the objects of use and service in daily life. To Post-Theater man, everything is theater.

3

To me, the dressing-room is my sacristy, the stage my altar, and the actor a priest. During my innocence I spent many hours playing in a Baroque church, the Purísima Concepcion. From the beginning, I was as fascinated by the entrance door sculpted with angels as I was by the confessionals. I took advantage of the times in the afternoon when mass was not held and the church was empty to do puppet shows for my friends. The confessionals have a similar appearance to the small huts used in performing marionettes. They had curtains which allowed me to hide myself behind them and take out my hands to expose the marionettes. The performance is, to me, a liturgy: God is theater.
Post-Love is a Post-Theater work conceived as a misa solemnis, a liturgy to be repeated indefinitely, day after day, forever and ever, Amen. We, the Post-Theater men, will find happiness on an island in the shape of a heart. This paradise will be a labyrinth of gardens where we will walk radiantly and unclothed. Large sculptures with the monolithic kiss of Brancusi will evoke the totemic statues of Easter Island. In the center of the island we will find an idyllic Venice of heart-shaped canals and labyrinths made of water where gondolas will navigate guided by angels, conducing lovers to the Temple of Eros in the center of the lake.
The temple will have the characters of theater, gothic stained-glass windows with scenes and motifs of theater. Our naked bodies, tatooed with the pentagrams of the Blue Danube by Strauss, will approach the altar in procession and there we will perform, one and a thousand times, Post-Love. Then, we will transform into a white, marble kiss, immortal like Rodin's kiss.
A musical angel, to the rhythm of a waltz, will make us understand that we must love theater above all else because theater is not an art, but a religion.

4

The trees suffer from our whims of love. At the age of eight, I went to live as a boarder in a boarding school, in a town called Santa Maria de la Real de Nieva. The landscape blossomed with pine trees. In truth, it was precisely on the bark of those pine trees that I carved the symbol of love, the heart, because, like those trees, I also am a slave of love. In the new post-theatrical culture, the man and the woman have tatooed on their breast, exactly at the height of the heart, a heart engraved in yellow and green, a reproduction of the heart in the Post-Theater play, Berenice in the Key of Blah. It is the heart in which we find reproduced the phrase that the woman in love tells her impossible love: "I loved, I loved, Lord, and I wanted to be loved."
The Post-Theater men will accept defeat, slavery, and will renounce to rise in rebellion against Love's tyranny, because against Love all revolution is impossible.

5

Sure enough, at the boarding school, in one of the empty classrooms they built a theater, a stage of golden columns and red, velvet curtains. It was here that I stood out due to my theatrical gifts. Twice a week we would make an excursion to nearby towns and improvise a performance, this scene or the other, this episode or the other - whatever we needed to get rewarded by the townspeople with candies, sweets or even money.
From the school's patio, surrounded by a large wall, we could perceive the horizon across which passed the railroad tracks. The noise created by the children playing in the patio would stop suddenly when the train went by. It was a symbol of utopia and of liberty-the train that took us, three times a year, to our families, to our home. I remember that the train's time-schedule coincided with the theater rehearshals and we would interrupt our rehearsal for the ritual of seeing the train go by. Perhaps, I'm not sure, this image so strong in my mind has led to the narrow relationship that I make between the theater and travelling. Post-Theater man has the theater as a country and to travel the road of theater around the world as a final destiny.
The laws and customs of the Republic of Post-Theater compel its citizens to make an voyage of initiation to different places around the world where at each one, as if it were a sanctuary, the traveller must stop to read one of the thirty-three Scenogramic works by Joseph-Angel.
This mystic voyage of initiation begins in Elsinore, Denmark with the ritual of the Post-Theater Manifesto and continues to the Temple to the Sucession in Vienna where you must read Theater in Blank or then to Versailles where you read Berenice or, to cite as a last example, to Khajuraho, India where at its erotic temples you read Don Juan Kama-Sutra.

6

My country, my family, is the theater. I am an heir of the 'cómicos de la legua' (wandering comedians) and I maintain the tradition of wandering from town to town. I travelled half of Europe with my stage prompter's suitcase arriving, for example, in Berlin in the 1970's to study theater. Soon I went to the University of Paris, the Sorbonne. Later, after becoming a professor of the University of Barcelona, I remembered that time in my life. I promoted and programed the Itinerant Congress of European Theater Around the World and the Itinerant Congress of Popular Theater Around Catalonia, influenced by my childhood dreams. As logotypes for these Congresses, I chose Harlequin dressed in white, holding the suitcase made from the prompt box, and Thespis chariot. I feel I am a Harlequin. This character grasping the prompt-box suitcase - because Post-Theater man is, above all, an unweary explorer. Like the pilgrims who travelled the Road to Santiago to arrive at the Cathedral, Post-Theater man is also a pilgr

im, but of the theater, following the road of theater folklore which will take us to the Machu-Pichu mountains in Peru, the icebergs in the Laplands or to the pyramids in Egypt.
We spent nine days travelling by bus around Catalonia, each day in one town or two, and now we will be celebrating an Itinerant Congress in Nepal and in India. I am fascinated by the Road of the Ramayana, by the act of walking theatrically on the roads of Asia, the theater of flowers and elephants. At the age of six when I was a young boy, I went to my dear father's town, Alba de Tormes. Due to my interest in the theater, I chanced to meet an old stage prompter in charge of a theater in ruins.
It was here in this theater, with its dust-covered decorations and scenography and spider-infested curtains, that I spent countless, memorable times inside the prompt box. This now useless place was used as a dance floor, I think for parties.
The old stage prompter, and musician, gave me as a gift the prompt box with which I had become slightly enamoured. He came with me to a carpenter's studio where we converted the prompt box into a suitcase by adding a lid and a handle. I returned to my house in Salamanca and began to use the prompt box as a trunk for my theater secrets, plays, costumes, masks and all other sorts of fantasies.
I am a Baroque form, who has the absolute need to live on the road, to travel where'er the road leads in search of my Lord and Master, the audience, to tell it wonderful dreams and initiate it in magical rites.

7

Before, it was customary in theater for the person in charge of telling us when the performance was to begin to hit the stage floor three times with a stick. Well then, in the theater of my life, the alarm clock fulfills this duty. The first thing I do when I awake each morning by the sound of the alarm clock is to put the make-up on reality. In my agenda I write the script I must interpret and, then, in front of the mirror, I choose one of my multiple masks from the collection offered me by my trunk of hypocrisy. I grab my passport and suitcase and begin my journey where chance and fantasy lead me.
The Post-Theater man believes profoundly in chance; that is why he carries dice in his left pocket, dice with which all of Mephistophele's adepts can foretell the future and influence their own destiny. Chance is Post-Theater man's gospel.
One day, by chance, in a ceremony by Mephistophele's adepts at the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, something extraordinaire occured: "...Fauno's music awoke in me the desire to evade the ignorance to which heaven had me condemned".
Mephistopheles then appeared, offering, as he had Faust, to reveal to me the mystery of eternity in exchange for my blasphemy against God. Said and done. I emptied my Pandora's box of profanities against the principle of authority according to our pact, and then the devil showed me the road to dissidence; his cunning opened the cage of taboos which imprisioned me and his voice dictated the commandment ordering me to fly because, he said, "Theater is an art for slaves, Post-Theater is liberty!". And that is how, through hell's theology, I learned Post-Theater, the devil's art.
I came in contact with the Faustian Masons, brotherhoods and sisterhoods, that use the theater as a sacred act in honor of Mephistopheles. The key points to the performances of my works are only known to shamans and only members of the great Faustian Lodges can perform them. In the same way that in different religions the only person able to minister the mass is the High Priest, the Shaman, or Great Faustian Master, is the only person with the authority to perform my Post-Theater works.
Listen closely:
Each one of my works contains a great curse, a curse on those stage directors who intend to produce my works as if it were a work by Shakespeare or Lope de Vega. Only someone who knows the secrets of my Post-Theater works can utter the magical formula that prevents any danger. The Mephistophelean pact of silence to which they are bound consists precisely in not representing the Post-Theater works that within this Faustian Lodge exist and, furthermore, in never revealing the key points of the perforrnance.

8

In the origins of time, there must have existed two civilizations, that of the humans and that of the comedians.
Sometimes I have suspected that we, the men of theater, are a civilization colonized by the human species. And, they must have lived in different spaces or worlds. Unfortunately, man invaded, conquered and finally submitted the ethnicity of Theater to him.
Later, he used it to enjoy and entertain himself. But, we, the comedians, have always maintained the hope that we would return, recuperating liberty.
"To each time its art, to each art its liberty".
It was in the Temple of New Art, that is, in the Monument to the Secession in Vienna, as I stood laureled below its dome, that an angel appeared before me. He was the same angel that is in a painting by Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, Louvre, 1827, and in the same manner that the angel crowns Homer, so it crowned me and told me that I had been chosen by destiny as Post-Homeric Poet and at the same time, President of the Royal Republic of Post-Theater.
Subsequently, by decree I ordered that all the buildings, museums and libraries of the world - including representations of folkloric theater - be confiscated to become property of the Republic of Post-Theater.
In the following twenty years, I have created a total of 54 Post-Theater works under the general title, From Hamlet's Illiad to Yorick's Odyssey. The first period, from 1970 to 1980, is called the Scenogramic. Thirty-three works, including the Manifesto, compose it and all thirty-three are denominated kamlet's Illiad. The second period known as the Polygramic, from 1980 to 1990 with a total of twenty-one works, compose Yorick's Odyssey.

9

When the mythical angel of Post-Theater crowned me, I began to give anthropological, aesthetical and judicial form to the Republic of Post-Theater. The constitution of the Republic of Post-Theater is printed on triangular paper, or papyrus, and contains the fundamental aesthetics of the Post-Republic. I will cite by memory a brief summary of the Post-Theater Constitution that approximately says the following:

Royal Constitution of the Republic of Post-Theater

Article 1.
The only norm in theater creation is that there is no norm.

Article 2.
Theater is the art for slaves and Post-Theater is liberty.

Article 3.
Theater is only useful for making love.

Post-Theater citizen wears white underwear, printed with red hearts, the underwear the reader wears in the Post-Theater play Desdemona's Handkerchief. Moreover, this man wears a green shirt with pink-colored hearts, a coat-and-pants suit - a white suit with blue hearts, white gloves, the ones he uses to read Theater in Blank, and a black handkerchief, which he uses to read Theater in Black. And, of course, he wears socks embroidered with the numbers that appear in This is a Play.
Although I could go on describing objects and characteristics of the man of the Post-Theater culture, I must tell that this man carries a pen in the shape of a pyramid/tetrahedron and, what's more, he carries a heart-shaped ring on his finger, the finger which he uses to go through the pages of Post-Theater works, and he also carries a bottle of perfume in the shape of a heart, the bottle from the work Cyrano's Perfume. He never forgets to carry a pillbox containing aspirins for when he has love upsets and, likewise, a gram of craziness.
The basic architectonic shape for publishing books or diplomatic flags of my Royal Republic is, above all, the triangle, because Yorick's skull has triangular shape, the skull with the smile of death. The Post-Theater man always takes with him the triangle-shaped passport and his suitcase, also of triangle form, containing multiple Post-Theater plays and objects (works published in triangular book form, apart from the other supplemental objects). Hamlet Computer symbolizes the first actor of the Post-Theater era and Yorick the last actor of theater's history.
The Royal Republic of Post-Theater has its own money and stamps. There are four triangular-shaped stamps. The first has the image of Hamlet Computer, Post-Hamlet, the second has Hamlet announcing the death of theater to the Virgin Mary - The Post-Theater Announcement, the third has Yorick's skull the death of theater, and the fourth shows an enigramatic image of Joseph-Angel I, your disobedient servant and President of the Royal Republic of Post-Theater.
In the Post-Theater city, the point at which all roads meet is the Post-Theater Temple, a pyramid, or great tetrahedron of many levels. At the hour of the Angelus, the Post-Theater citizen will go to pray at the temple, each man dressed as Hamlet, each woman dressed as Ophelia. They will place themselves in symmetrical, equi-distant position. They will kneel and pray the ritual prayer of the Manifesto, the death of theater and the advent of Post-Theater.

10

Initation into the Post-Theater is accomplished by an act of self-mutilation of the eyes, like the Greek poet Homer. We must tear our eyes out in the same fashion that a corkscrew draws the cork from a bottle; we must pull out our eyes. Because they are no longer necessary, theater has died.
To love or to die, everything is theater, Ladies and Gentleman. Theater and I loved each other passionately until alas! one day destiny converted me into Royal Highness like it did Titus, the Emperor. Then, for reasons of State, I felt forced to kill theater as Titus the love of Berenice. I still recall how we walked hand in hand down the steps that led to the Ganges. It was sunset and the ashes of life floated upon its waters. A Hindu in a white turban ministered the twilight and united us with a garland of green leaves and yellow flowers. We submerged ourselves in the waters and I rebaptized her Berenice and she did the same and named me Titus, emperor of her heart. Then, as we kissed, we agreed to make of those purifying waters the emblem of the lovers of death. And it is because to Banares, the sacred and aphrodisiacal city, the city to sanctify theater and pleasure, you must go to die of love.
I cannot live without loving and I cannot love without theater. Theater, my love.

Fig. 1 - Theatre's Funeral Like a costume magician, I have costumed the characters of El Greco's painting and from a tragedy make Commedia dell' Arte. That is to say, I convert theater's history into a 'corrida' (bullfight), and the last actor into a dead bullfighter.
A. The Burial of Theater: composition by Joseph-Angel inspired in El Entierro del conde de Orgaz (The Burial of Count Orgaz) by El Greco.

Fig. 2 - Post-Tauromachy The bullfighter holds in his hand the muletilla¹, his sudario², like Hamlet holds Yorick's skull. The bullfight is a performance for which Death distinguishes itself as a bullfighter. To Post-Theatre man, to love or to die, all is theater.

Fig. 3 - The Post-Theater Salute
The slaves of love, when gathered at a meeting, salute with the Mudra of the heart. The town crier, charlatan of revolutions, proclaims the end of utopia because against love all revolution is impossible.

Fig. 4 - The Waterloo of love Hope was finally defeated at the Battle of Love-Loo. Post-Modern man, with his Passion on his shoulders, has forever lost the possibility of being happy. Henceforth, it is forbidden to love.

Fig. 5 - The Post-Theater Traveller "By decree all the buildings, museums and libraries of the world - including representations of folkloric theater - are confiscated and pass to become property of the Republic of Post-Theater."
A. Harlequin the Traveller with his prompt box (logotype that Joseph-Angel employs for the Itinerant Congress of European Theater Around the World).
B. Carriage of Comedians (Thespis) in Greece (logotype that Joseph-Angel creates for the Itinerant congress of Catalonian theater).

Fig. 6 - Small Theater of Snails "At the beginning and at the end of my Theater of Snails, I always saluted the audience by taking off my musketeer's hat with a bow of reverence, as if I were at court in Versailles, imitating Molière's gesture (pose) as Sganarelle."
A. Harlequin and Columbine (George Barbier, 1923)
B. Punchinello
C. Molière as Sganarelle (Engraving by Simonin)

Fig. 7 - The oration of the Post-Theater announcement

¹Muletilla: a rod with a cape (commonly red) which the bullfighter uses to provoke the bull when he is about to kill it.
² Sudario: cloth used to wrap a dead body.

19th Congress

URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas92/lisb07.htm