In 1971, the National Theatre produced The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria, by Fernando Arrabal. In the middle of the first dress rehearsal, the director spontaneously ordered his two actors to take off all of their clothes. Jim Dale refused. Not so, Anthony Hopkins, however, who stripped right down So comfortable was he, in fact, that some time later, Hopkins had to be urged to please put his clothes back on.
To my mind, each of these describes the same world: de Chirico, Brancusi, Gaudi, the 1973 Czech film Fantastic Planet, Borges' “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Satie ’ s Trois GymnopĂ©dies, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Gulliver's Travels , Cirque du Soleil , Brian Quinette’s Invisible Library, both the Codex Seraphianus and the Voynich Manuscript, the library at Alexandria, the game of chess and the numbered (but not the titled) chapters of Calvino's If, on a Winter's Night, a Traveler . And Barcelona.
Comments
Post a Comment