A house bursts into flames as it’s submerged in floodwaters. A doctor tells a cameraman filming a dying Ukrainian child to send the footage to Putin. A newspaper delves into the murder of a young woman. An Australian cricketing legend drops dead overnight. It’s like a fever dream: a pandemic bleeds into the edges of a global war.
I lie in a bed of bubbles, my tired muscles are pummelled by water in the clean, tiled day spa. A friend and I have birthdays in the same week and are treating ourselves, because that’s what you do when you’re a middle-class Aussie.
But there’s cognitive dissonance to the endless newsreel of tragedy and disaster in my head and the serene spa room. I try to lie still and be present, the rumble of bubbles filling my ears but I’m on edge, like an ant under a magnifying glass. What’s going up in flames next? How can you not carry the weight of the world when the world is at our fingertips?
‘There should be a word for the feeling of “carrying on life in a luxuriantly safe country” while the rest of the world is happening,’ Helen Rumbelow wrote in the Sunday Times. What is that word? What do you do with the jumble of emotions which surface every time you check the endless banner of disaster reeling across your screen?
‘We take in tragic news stories almost every day, but we rarely recognise them as belonging to a coherent narrative cycle with a distinct moral to impart,’ Alain de Botton wrote in The News, A User’s Manual. Botton’s argument is that we don’t really know how to process the news. Information, historically, was difficult to access so our inner lives were kept ‘in check’. ‘And now the hum and rush of the news (has) seeped into our deepest selves.’
I flip between apathy and helplessness, sometimes within the space of a few minutes. A token donation flicked to Oxfam feels trivial in the face of human suffering, like trying to put out a fire with a humidifier. My life plods along with a predictable rhythm: kids, bills, work, study, sleep, repeat. And yet, the news follows me into the darkest corners of my sleep. Pictures of children who, the previous day, were playing are now running for their lives.
'The news presents information, and it has no moral duty to tell us how we should feel about it or help us untangle the knot of feelings which emerge. This is what theatres, cinemas, museums and libraries were created for, to house the soul.'
Writer and director Bryan Doerries had a hunch that ancient stories could speak to us about the complexities and injustices of the world. His company, ‘Theatre of War’ presents newly translated readings of Greek tragedies, Biblical stories and poetry. He started out presenting the tragedies of Sophocles to returned vets, realising that much of these texts grapple with the devastations of war and the wounds inflicted, both inner and outer. As a result, people opened up like never before starting potentially life-saving conversations.
‘That purpose (of the plays) was to communalize trauma,’ Doerries said in an interview with ‘On Being’s’ Krista Tippett. He points out that ‘amphi’ in ‘amphitheatre’ means ‘both ways’, both the actors and audience observe one another. He wants to flip the notion that actors are revered, like Greek gods on the stage. In his forums (even the word forum is more apt than performance) the audience plays an integral role in the discussions which follow. In Doerries’ words: ‘(the) audience who had experienced more loss, more trauma, more betrayal, more oppression had more to teach us about these ancient myths and plays than we were to teach them,’ he says in an interview with Thomas McGuire in American literary magazine ‘War, Literature and the Arts’.
Premiering in 2016, Doerries’ production ‘Antigone in Ferguson’ was a response to the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in 2014. The Greek chorus became a gospel choir shout-singing truths behind the actors, which culminated in a solo by Michael Brown’s former teacher. ‘The Book of Job’ was staged following a tornado which devastated Joplin in 2011. The Biblical story of a man who loses everything and cries out to God for answers resonated with those rebuilding their lives.
The conversations which follow are the pinnacle of the event; an alchemy between performers and audience. As Stephen K. Levine writes in Trauma, Tragedy, Therapy: The Arts and Human Suffering, ‘The arts give a form to the suffering of the soul, a ritual communal structure in which it can be held.’
Doerries creates an air of religious reverence, the high priest intermediary between people and their trauma. He asks the audience to identify with one of the characters, to explore what the story has brought up for them.
Aristotle first used the word ‘catharsis’ in Poetics. He inextricably linked the idea of catharsis or cleansing to tragedy. Watching Paul Giamatti as Job, crying desperately out to God to take his life certainly feels cathartic to those who have experienced the extremes of human suffering.
The news presents information, and it has no moral duty to tell us how we should feel about it or help us untangle the knot of feelings which emerge. This is what theatres, cinemas, museums and libraries were created for, to house the soul.
I was once part of a theatre ensemble. We’d paint ourselves white and drape sheets over our body with a ‘Make Poverty History’ sash and stand in public corners, still, like statues. A fellow member one day, was standing in full garb, with chains wrapped around his hands. A young man, so moved by this display approached him, weeping, something inside of him unlocked. My co-performer opened his arms and the two hugged. I don’t know what was happening for this young man, but it felt cathartic.
I take a piece of birthday cake to the 96-year-old woman who lives down the street because I know what it feels like to be lonely. We sit in her lounge room, curtains drawn, while news on TV rolls tragedies in the background. We don’t talk about much, but we share the same space, and when you’re carrying the weight of the world, sometimes that’s enough.
Cherie Gilmour is a writer from Torquay whose work has appeared in Voiceworks, The Australian and her blog.
Main image: Woman at home looking at her phone. (Getty Images)