Christos Lygas “enlightens” aspects of a Dark House

Presenting one of the most recent plays of the famous American writer Neil LaBute, the In a Dark Dark House that was written in 2007, the theatrical company Protes Yles will be hosted at Michael Cacoyannis Foundation.

The In a Dark Dark House has been firstly presented at Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York and approaches the story of two brothers, both of whom, experience from their diverse and own perspective a sexual abuse: a thirty year old security guard named Terry has come to visit his estranged younger brother, Drew, in a psychiatric hospital. Drew, a wealthy attorney, is confined here after a spate of bad behaviour including drunk driving and coke possession. Eventually, he musters the courage to tell his brother that he was sexually abused in his boyhood by a slightly older family friend named Todd. The furious Terry goes off to search for Todd, with the apparent goal of exacting revenge.

Drews request is the occasion to unveil the hostility feelings of the two men relationship. Through pain and betrayal acknowledgement, brothers start fumbling indelible evidence of the violent abuse that have suffered in and out the family environment.

The suppressed memories of a dark childhood haunt the two boys adult life, marked ineffaceably by the catastrophic influence of the double attack by an abusive father who rampages roundly, and a young man, whose repetitive catastrophic action ends to a real mental murder.

Remnants of this past are being revived by the time both men fight against pain and betrayal that marked their relationship forever

Read an extract of the interview of Christos Lygas to www.mcf.gr about the performance “In a Dark, Dark House”.

He directs one of the most recent plays of the famous American writer Neil LaBute, which is being presented for the first time ever at a Greek stage, and at the same time he attempts to bring into the light the most traumatic moments of two men who have lived In a Dark, Dark House. Christos Lygas approaches the inner layers of the human soul and allows us to enter into the process of his artistic effort, talking to www.mcf.gr for the performance of the Theatrical Ensemble Protes Yles that is going to be hosted at Michael Cacoyannis Foundation from February 16th 2011.

The writer of the play, during a procedure of soul searching in relation to his personal tragic experience, ends up to the following: It is quite strange how we finally survive and our life takes a shape. At the same time, the relationship between the two men that is being unveiled on stage has as common point of reference an also tragic experience that emerges at the moment as a recall of the past. Which are those shapes that memory imposes on human soul, body, as well as on the human behavior itself?

I believe that part of how powerful LaButes dramaturgy is, it is exactly that avoiding to become melodramatic and hyperemotional on this subject, which is tragic in its own nature, isolates particularly the consequences of tragedy on how we encounter them on the shape of the two mens lives, when we meet them, mature now on, at an age just before their forties. At this shape of their lives, I think that truly is being illustrated what someone could call as traumatic memory, maybe camouflaged in a sense. Specifying I would say that they are like two beings, two kids who have experienced a very traumatic environment of childhood, a very traumatic upbringing, in a different, someone could say, way. The young covered himself and developed a such kind of defense, like an ostrich, at an emotional as well as psychological level, while the older brother lied himself wide open to the social interaction, and substantially confronted all that abusive attack that experienced as a child. As far as the older one is concerned, someone could observe that it is a post-traumatic transformation even the fact that he chooses to join a war, in Kuwait, in the context of modern America, where you can avoid it. It seems to be a conscious choice to go to a war. Moreover, he is a man who chooses to work as a private security guard, something that, as I believe, allows him to hide his own self. A man who moves around in a city without having identity. At the same time it gives to me a sense that, besides it seems to be a profession that has to do with the expression of some kind of power, I think that in the end it is just a cover. He is scared It is more defense rather than aggression the job he chooses. On the other hand, as far as the young one is concerned, someone could say that, all that memory has been transformed, in appearance only, into something painless, because he develops an ambition. He wants to make it, he fights with the system and he succeeds, but in parallel, it is him who undermines and subverts his own choice, sabotaging the foundations of the familys emotional life, through moral excesses and declensional from moral standards behavior. Generalizing however, because I feel that you put it in general, I think that all that memory never goes away from our lives and always finds a disguised existence, either in the relationships we make, or in the way, mainly, we communicate. I think that the experience of a warlike situation shapes and bears a character, who will survive through a conflict with the reality, the life and the society.

In which forms memory returns and defines the heroes lives? Does it exist always in the sphere of imaginary as spectral images, ghosts or do we witness an embodiment of it?

I think it is being incarnated. The confinement itself of the young one in the psychiatric clinic has to do exactly with this embodiment. His deeper psychic motivation is, somehow, to break down that entire psychological defense which is also his torture. He becomes an exceptional, genius liar; he becomes a master in the game of deception. He ends up, however, this deception to be a torture for him. I think that all this relationship with drugs, alcoholism and addiction in general, has to do with this. The older seems to be very much tight morally. It is as if he tries to make a mask very moral, to support it and finally this to become his vehicle to survival, because, essentially, he is a very frightened being. Yes, I do believe that it is not at all intellectual, it is not just memories, nor images, it is written, I think, on their bodies.

The in question experiences have been put into the sphere of inhibition. Someone could suggest that here, in the line of the performance, is being attempted to emerge the un-communed of the heroes existence. How this excess is being accomplished so as the unspeakable of the human soul to get essence and to be unfolded?

Through the conflict I would say When difficult truths that cannot emerge to the surface of life come along, in our relationships, I think that the unique vehicle, which, of course, is painful and we usually avoid it because it is unpleasant, is the conflict. Of course I do not talk about a little fight or hassle, because I think that the two brothers enter, completely unconsciously, to a story of real eradication. Because I believe that only through a, big and tough confrontation, this unspeakable and hard truth can be brought into the light. It is as if someone would say that this conflict will demolish all these walls that have been formed in their souls.

Is an aesthetic language being used? If so, which is the vocabulary that is being shaped by the writer, as well as by you in order to be available to both the actors and the audiences service for the decipherment of the play?

Originally in a dramaturgic level, by the writers side, I think that LaBute is a master and really extraordinary in writing a primal level of camouflage for the motivations of characters, as far as I am concerned, in the topmost successful way in contemporary theatre. This is a small danger, a little entrapment, because, if somebody considers the primal level as the real truth of the relationship on the specific moment, will destroy the essence of the underground path of the characters. By the time I sensed this dramaturgically, I tried to move in parallel.
In other words, I wanted the first level to function as the cover of the characters in their communication, while simultaneously actors to be aware in a very particular way that underneath, their faces give direct and clear hits to the core of the relationship. That is to say that they use, someone would say, the first level of their speech like a small coverage of their real motivations, which are more complex and more extreme. This is the aesthetic shape that I tried to respect, as far as direction is concerned, so as this to be able to be called to the lines that follow the development of the relationship, mainly, between the two brothers.

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