People Annihilation or My Liver Is Senseless
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Schwab was an underground sensation in Austria and Germany in the early 90s. But his work is nearly unknown in America–this is the North American premiere of People Annihilation and, as far as I can tell, only the second production of his work in this country. That’s hardly surprising, however, given Schwab’s eagerness to defy bourgeois theatrical expectations. Like Jarry, Artaud, and Witkiewicz before him, Schwab turns theater into a social irritant by using heightened, fractured language and repulsive characters. Sticking with this play to the final curtain, even in a production as smart, colorful, and funny as this one, was an ordeal at times.
That probably would have suited Schwab just fine. His work belongs to Austria’s robust tradition of postwar nihilism, notably the Viennese Actionists of the 1960s. (Their performances included self-mutilation, coprophilia, and ritualistic animal killings; the group’s cofounder, Gunter Brus, was arrested during a 1968 event when he stripped naked, cut himself with a razor, smeared feces on himself, and sang the Austrian national anthem while masturbating.) Schwab’s most immediate influence, however, was fellow Austrian playwright (and novelist) Thomas Bernhard, who also portrayed people as fundamentally brutal, stupid, and intolerant. What separates these writers’ work from the adolescent self-indulgence of a Bret Easton Ellis or Sarah Kane is a buoying, paradoxical faith in the beauty of the human morass. As Bernhard wrote in his autobiography, he believed the world was “a cesspit, but one which engendered the most intricate and beautiful forms if one looked into it long enough.”
