ABSTRACT
After the cinema, the rigours of live action again. One show of ninety minutes. Four young performers this time. A show very much of its time, addressing the times. We shall speak of nothing else, entertaining the images, pulling on a thread or two to see where they lead. But first, an invocation to the theatre, and the maybe unexpected evocation of an ancient name. The Latin biographer Suetonius gives a detailed account of the sort of pumped-up culture of theatre and public spectacle that prevailed during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero. We read, for instance, of a staged naval engagement in an artificial lake of sea-water with sea-monsters swimming in it, and hear of a ballet of Daedalus and Icarus where the actor playing Icarus, dying for real in his failed flight, fell beside the emperor's couch spattering the imperial presence with his blood. At first, Suetonius tells us, Nero would watch the shows through a small window in the closed imperial box. Later, however, he would open the box and preside over the performances, taking part in tragedies and singing contests himself, performing in masks modeled on his own face, holding his listeners literally captive as he sang while other members of the audience ‘being so bored with listening and applauding [… ] furtively dropped down from the wall at the rear, since the gates were kept barred, or shammed dead and were carried away for burial.’ 1 The impression that Suetonius bequeaths us is of a stage-struck emperor who would only appear at public engagements with a voice-trainer standing by, who joined in when fights took place among the pantomime actors by throwing things onto the heads of the crowd, and who in his military preparations ‘was mainly concerned with finding enough wagons to carry his stage equipment.’ 2 It is an impression of theatrical obsession and also political irresponsibility that becomes inseparable, as the story proceeds, from an image of murderous criminality which leads, as the state falls into ruin, to Nero meeting his end as a fugitive, hiding out in a house near Rome, stabbing himself in the throat as his pursuers close in and dying ‘with eyes glazed and bulging from their sockets, a sight which horrified everybody present.’ 3 At his death, we are told, citizens ran through the streets in celebration, although there were also those who would continue to lay spring and summer flowers on his grave for some years after, and Suetonius concludes the biography by recording that ‘twenty years later, when I was a young man, a mysterious individual came forward claiming to be Nero; and so magical was the sound of his name in the Parthians’ ears that they supported him to the best of their ability, and only handed him over with great reluctance.’ 4
