Dark journey a starkly beautiful view

In the beginning was there chaos? Was there a Big Bang? Did order and civilization follow?
In Romeo Castellucci’s vision, “Genesis: Voyage From the End of the Night,” the beginning is a nightmare of chaos. The play, a metaphorical journey, will be performed at the LG Arts Center in Yeoksam-dong 7:30 p.m. tonight and 4 p.m. tomorrow.
Mr. Castellucci’s interpretation of the beginning of human life has been called dark, but it is a starkly beautiful dark.
Bereft of a linear plot, the avant garde performance takes us into a world of terrifying sights and sounds, with an original score by Scott Gibbons.
Adam is a black man who powders himself white. Eve is a woman with one breast. Cain has a deformed arm. Auschwitz is like a tea party hosted by the Mad Hatter.
The production begins with the first chapter of the Bible, leaping to Marie Curie’s discovery of radium, wandering to Auschwitz, and then returning to the Bible and Cain in a circular contemplation of death and rebirth.
“The characters are typically Dostoevsky-like,” Mr. Castellucci told Fluctuat, a French journal. “They kill without knowing why. And, starting from this crime, Cain, in the third act, reconsiders himself.”
Mr. Castellucci, who lives in Italy, produces radical plays. He co-founded the visual arts troupe Societas Raffaello Sanzio in Cesena.
His play “Orestea” received the prize for best foreign production at the Festival of the Americas in Montreal in 1997.
Writing about Mr. Castellucci, the Glasgow Herald noted that “David Mamet has described theater as a way of dreaming in public, an idea which Castellucci takes to its most abstract and compelling extreme.”

by Joe Yong-hee

For more information, call (02) 2005-0114 or visit the Web site www.lgart.com. For tickets, visit www.ticketlink.co.kr.