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CRISIS - THE OBJECT OF DESIREThe efforts of society are directed to the elimination of the crisis but the psyche of the individual craves a crisis. This paradox can never be resolved. It is the secret tension at the heart of all social order |
WILL,
FATE, CHOICE, INEVITABILITY
As the crisis unfolds it oscillates between causality and randomness...
as the characters grasp at significance, meaning slips between their fingers.
Whatever purported to be evidence is chimera... this is the reverse of
the detective story, which contains an immaculate truth, a solution ....
the longing for enlightenment is here seen to be a desperate and punishing
misapprehension... everything takes the characters to a destiny, but whether
this destiny is willed, a collusion, or an accident, defies analysis.
All that is left to them is an emotional perfection, a sublime arrival.....
Howard Barker September 2001
I
have developed the aptitude for crisis when the crisis has yet to materialise.
Never mind. When the crisis does arrive how much more prepared I'll be.
Shardlow
The crisis is just another
pretext for you to talk about yourself.
Vistula
The crisis will certainly
dispose of me and that I daresay is its purpose
Hebbel
Supported by the Arts
Council of England.
Presented in
association with the Gardner Arts Centre.
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A HOUSE OF CORRECTION 
A
world war threatens. On a remote and wild frontier stands a lonely castle
with strange inhabitants. A bedridden poet and three women who may be
his mistresses. Into this tense world rides a government messenger whose
satchel contains the dispatch that might just spark the conflict. His
mission is of the utmost urgency but despite all his attempts he is unable
to leave. And all the time strange aircraft pass overhead from both directions,
dropping not bombs but poems.... 
Howard
Barker's unnerving tale sets passion against duty amid the brinkmanship
of war. Powerful poetic language, provocative ideas and rich, dark humour
build a compelling study of the futility of will in the face of possession.
This thought provoking work exposes the strange longing for crisis that
seethes below the surface in us all.