A wise man once said, “You’re not paranoid if they’re really after you.”
Director Michael Bowman wants to leave his audience with an impending sense of paranoia after watching his latest play, “Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned.”
An abstract performance piece, “Blood” traces the mystery of the Rennes-le-Chateau and examines conspiracy theories on the Knights of Templar, Mary Magdalene and the bloodline of Christ.
“I was intrigued by the conspiracy theory phenomenon especially in the Information Age where we’ve devolved into hunters and gatherers of information,” Bowman said. “So I wanted to expose the audience to so much information they struggle to turn it into something that makes sense … which is clinically very similar to paranoia.”
The engaging, multimedia “Blood” opens with a synopsis of the conspiracy as the players walk onto the candle-lit stage. Soon, the actors’ remote pantomime performances meld into one strange apocryphal journey from Jerusalem to Egypt to the South of France.
Bowman actually visited the towns in France where the Catholic Church still obscures myths of Mary Magdalene and legends of a truer version of Christianity.
“I thought I had a healthy skepticism of it all,” Bowman said. “But I found myself really enjoying this story of an underground Christianity.”
A slide show designed by Gretchen Stein shows images of medieval paintings and crop circles while the actors take turns talking about the conspiracy. Their differing characters and perspectives spin a sensationalistic momentum and build into a rapid “jumping to conclusions” session.
“It began with me just telling the cast the story because I had no pre-conceived notions of what the performance would be,” Bowman said. “So I encouraged them to pick out the pieces of the story which were interesting to them and develop their own monologues.”
Some characters are intelligent believers or vigilante researchers convinced of their own brilliant discoveries. Other speeches have the flair of stand-up comedy and an acerbic dose of skepticism.
“I might come across as a bad guy,” actor Drew White said. “We’re all different, but [the monologues] flow really well.”
In one scene White wanders around the female members of the cast posed as sculptures of Mary Magdalene, who is historically referred to as a prostitute. “She used to be a nice Jewish girl,” White says shaking his head.
“The Magdalene imagery we were working with–these old paintings with the jar, or the skull or the book and the long hair, semi-nude–and we wanted to pick that iconic image apart,” Bowman said. “There’s no basis for it at all, just a pope in the sixth century saying ‘Mary Magdalene is a whore.'”
Whatever the truth, “Blood” proves an engrossing experience revealing the tangled strands of an ancient mystery worthy of an X-Files episode or two. Performances of “Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned” will be shown in The Black Box Theater (137 Coates Hall) tonight through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for a $5 donation.