salvation?

I usually get one of two reactions when my degree in political science and theatre comes up in conversation.

Both are prefaced by an oh-that's-cool-and-unusual comment, eyebrow furrowing, head-nodding.

He he, says clever commentator one, all politicians are actors, anyways. He. He. CC1 is clearly delighted by his or her "originality"; I smile ambiguously.

Clever commentator two wants to know how art will save the world, in a tone that assumes that I think it can.

I like them separately, I explain. I do not find the oratory or dissimulation skills of politicians particularly compelling. Fields like theatre and development are OK, but in general not theatre-y enough. I like politics all by itself, the analyses, the theories, the figures. And in theatre I care about the crafts, the practices, the methods, the event.

But maybe that's not all true.

Last June I saw "No Dice" by the OK Theatre Company of New York, in the context of the Alkantara Festival in Lisbon. (As an aside, if you ever have the chance to see them, go, go, go. It is five months later and I am still thinking about it.)

As I roamed the internet for more information about the festival, I came across a culture/interview show (Câmara Clara, for my parents who are regular viewers) with its director, a certain Belgian fellow (!) named Marc Deputter.

Marc Deputter is unabashadly interested in political theatre. It is what he likes, and therefore, what he programmes. He offered what I thought was a very eloquent defense of what political theatre is today. It's no longer about answers, like it was in the 60s or 70s, when the enemy was clear and the solution was clearer.

In a world of dominant, accepted models, of one idea, where the end of history and ideology have been proclaimed, it is plently political just to throw out some questions.

Does art save? No, he laughed, but it can open debate.

Relevant also is that this man is new artistic director of what is probably my favourite Lisbon municipal theatre, where he promises programming with more politics and more dance. He's taking over from a darling of the Portuguese theatre/soap opera scene, who programmed things like The Laramie Project and The Pillowman...but also cast Sally in his version of the musical Cabaret through a televised audition process.

It's weird, the artsy things that are seared in my memory. Not necessarily the most professional, or the most well-acted/directed/designed, or the nicest or funniest or saddest or scariest. It's those two dance shows that helped me make sense of movement on stage. It's Laramie, at McGill by people I knew, whose weight I am still carrying. The little Egyptian piece I played with in Directing, whose metaphor I still don't quite know the answer to. That nouveau-cirque scene with the naked woman. More recently, weird and wonderful No Dice and Shakespeare is Dead, both of which have appeared in my ramblings.

Despite earlier denials and a continued love affair with musicals (it seems incongruent, I can't explain), it appears that I am interested when theatre turns political.

(Now, if I could only figure out exactly what that means...what do we call political theatre today? what are its topics, its forms? isn't everything political? is it bound to a particular context? what happens when it travels or is translated? does it have to be contemporary? what does it achieve? what's the point???)

Geez, I could write a whole thesis about this.

For the moment, I'll concentrated on "The Veiled Monologues" (yup, Eve Ensler for/about Muslim women) this Sunday and my anthropology of Islam paper...