jenzcranium

My senior year of high school, I read this play as part of an independent course study of Oscar Wilde. My first impression upon completing it was: "Wow. That Salome is seriously f----d up!" However, four years later while I was searching for a one-act play to direct for my college thesis - and having no particular luck - I remembered this play. Reading it again produced in me quite a different reaction: if Salome is crazed (I was more discreet in my thoughts at that time), then she is so because society has taught her nothing else; she is a captive in the world of temptation, captive even in the way this society speaks in circles; she is today's woman. I got permission to put on the play at my Catholic college (which was always suspect of the performing arts already!), and not being aware of the current trend to treat it as camp, instead approached the piece as (nearly) verse drama: heightened emotions, heightened actions, a world that uses language for seduction, a world in which the words of a holy man shoot out like a lightning spear. In it, we found much about Wilde's own life parallel to the work. Much has been made of his disgrace and exile, but in reading Salome in conjunction with his poetry of the same time, and in light of the fact that in his exile he reconciled himself fervently with the Catholic Church, we see a portrait of a man who, much like Dorian Grey or Salome, is trapped by how people perceive him; who is forced to wear a public image he once enjoyed which now entraps and haunts him; a man who is fumbling after grace. My only wish is that more people would take Salome seriously (even if the translation from the French seems to purple-prose-y to our ears!). There is much of ourselves in it. (To see my version of Salome - somewhat edited for time and production constraints, and admittedly only my second foray at the time into directing, see here: http://youtu.be/7wEGn2tbnsg)

2023-06-24 04:53