THE SHOW WITHIN THE SHOW

On April 29^th, the Mystetskyi Arsenal opens the contemporary art project THE SHOW WITHIN THE SHOW. The dramatic universe of William Shakespeare resonates in our present cultural setting as we struggle with ambivalence in this most recent, painful period of social self-reflection.  Shakespearean chaos and order, love and hate, friendship and betrayal, power and subjection, sincerity and flattery, and the strain of these in correlation and resistance escape the confines of the Globe stage, permeating all of western literature and the arts in subsequent centuries.  Shakespeare’s work continues to be relevant in our day, touching as it does at the questions at the root of us, and the answers to which mankind has been in search of from antiquity.  THE SHOW WITHIN THE SHOW concept is derived from this work and tension and is presented in this International Year of Jubilee of William Shakespeare.

THE SHOW WITHIN THE SHOW exposition is comprised of two parts:  “Re-embodiment” and “Theater in History”.  The celebrated Shakespearean thesis that “all the world’s a stage” and that “we are merely players”, is imbued with the tragic declaration that we are born destined to a role.  Not surprisingly, some are wont to resist this universal “spectacle”, and actively resist its realization.  In this context, the theatre, sets, and actors take on an entirely other significance, manifesting the freedom of creation, and a striving to move beyond our divinely ordered predisposition.  This resistance evinces the purest desire for freedom, to choose one’s own path of life, and to live it fully, if briefly.  The theatre provides a means of escape from the universal spectacle, a challenge to the given reality that yet would not seek its ruin, but rather contrast that reality with one of its own fashioning.  In this way the show may prove more real than reality for a time.