Rising Image Productions & Target Practice

Profi le Rising Image Productions & Target Practice W. Barrett Huddleston University of Minnesota Fectious and Daemon in “Target Practice.” Photo courtesy of Rising Image Productions. I don’t think I could write a play to save my life. C.S. Lewis (Letter to “Susan” 5 February 1960) At the time of this writing, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe awaits an immanent widespread release in movie theaters worldwide. It remains to be seen whether or not Lewis was prudent to discourage fi lm adaptation of this same work over forty years ago for fear that the book would become “Disney-fi ed.” As Lewis 65 66 W. Barrett Huddleston said in a letter to theatre producer Jane Douglas, “I believe that plays should be plays; poems, poems; novels, novels…” (Griffi n 360). This, however, has not stopped a variety of artists, religious and secular, professional and amateur, from adapting his life and books for the stage and screen. The fi rst offi cial adaptation appeared on 19 November 1984, with the Westminster premiere of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, approximately twenty years after the author’s death. Since that time, almost all of Lewis’s principal works, including essays, biographies, and theological fantasies have been re-confi gured for live performance. In this respect, Rising Image Productions, a Christian touring company that primarily performs Lewis adaptations, should be commended for attempting to transform non-traditional narratives such as A Grief Observed and The Screwtape Letters, in addition to more conventional pieces like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Magician’s Nephew, and the popular Shadowlands. Grief and Screwtape, being respectively a litany of Lewis’s bereavement and reconciliation with God after his wife’s death and a series of instructional “epistles” from a senior demon to a junior, are distinct in their evangelical message and modes of representation. These distinct modes give the chance to signifi cantly alter each text for the purpose of constructing a potential performance; the danger inherent in this enterprise is altering each work to such an extent that it no longer retains any vestige of Lewis’s spiritual potency. Of particular interest to the current profi le of Rising Image Productions is its use of humor in performance. One example of this intersection of both source work and performance, comedy and theology, is the intertextual relationship between Lewis’s Screwtape Letters and David Payne and Evelyn O’Neal’s Target Practice. Payne and O’Neal, charter members of Rising Image, have modifi ed Lewis’s text from a series of infernal correspondences concerning the temptation of a human soul to an extended lesson in delivering “tainted targets” to “His Vileness” or Satan. The principal characters’ twisted lexicon is just one of many humorous tropes that resemble Lewis’s source work, its comedy and, at times, its comedic edge. The Screwtape Letters remains one of Lewis’s most popular and widely known books. Its unorthodox content and approach is often credited for securing the author’s posterity in both Great Britain and the United States. Though Lewis’s literary legacy is more often synonymous with the writer’s various apologetic essays or his series of children’s books, it was a devil, not a lion or a cross, that appeared next to the author’s image on the cover of Time magazine in 1947. The work concerns a series of instructive letters from senior fi end Screwtape to his ancillary tempter and nephew Wormwood. On the surface, the fi ction’s subject—one human soul’s conversion, spiritual development, and eventual salvation—appears somewhat bland in scope; an entire narrative devoted to an unnamed agent’s everyday temptations and trials seems an unlikely subject for so much positive reception and critical acclaim. However, it is the treatment of said material which elicits a sense of urgency from the reader since the Christian condition is fi ltered through the aberrant lens of a demonic observer. As a result, the often confusing doctrines of celestial warfare, including Profi le: Rising Image Productions 67 angels and demons, become more accessible: “Like so many of Lewis’s tales, it is a great story. We have an everyman whose goal is heaven, but he leads so quiet a life that his pilgrimage is hardly visible except to demonic eyes and their acute vision” (Walsh 24-25). As Lewis scholar Chad Walsh notes, everyday spiritual ordeals are given signifi cance through the imaginative perspective from which Lewis constructs his narrative. As one might expect, Target Practice deviates from Lewis’s Screwtape in a number of ways in an attempt to generate satire and spiritual suspense. Foremost, the dramatic action of Payne and O’Neal’s production occurs entirely within the chambers of instructor Daemon (Payne) as he teaches Fectious (O’Neal) the art of temptation. The performance space, however, more than adequately captures the harsh and hierarchal reality of Lewis’s hell, a bureaucratic nightmare of “red tape” and tedious protocol that thinly hides the true hostility and vindictive sentiments its denizens hold for one another. Behind the sinister bureaucracy of this environment lurks an equally nightmarish (and at times cannibalistic) pecking order. In regards to Target Practice, one’s focus is almost immediately drawn to a platform (the set’s highest point) containing a charcoal colored throne backed by a fl at devil’s head, complete with cut-out eyes and sharp horns. When the throne does not serve as a chair, the apparatus’s hollow eyes signify a ubiquitous Satan or “His Vileness” who constantly “watches” his minions—ready to terrify or molest them at any moment. To this extent, the throne references Screwtape’s disturbing pecking order. The spectator’s gaze subsequently shifts from the throne to a cage that rests on a turntable, center stage. As one may presume, the cage serves as a means of punishment for the apprentice Fectious. Daemon periodically imprisons Fectious for insubordination, incompetence, and general failure. He compounds the torture by spinning the cage, the speed of oscillation matching the degree of Fectious’s infraction. Two additional, miniature cages hang from metal pedestals; one contains the gooey remains of Pussance, Fectious’s demonic predecessor, signifying the literal “dog- eat-dog” mentality of The Screwtape Letters’ cannibalistic fi ends. As stated, Lewis presents hell as the ultimate materialist (meat) market, where everyone and everything are regarded as soulless objects that seek to consume one another. Pussance’s cage evokes this notion and reinforces the brutality of Target Practice’s demons. The other cage remains empty, perhaps causing the audience to wonder if the apparatus is reserved for Fectious should she fail in her diabolic duty. At the play’s onset, Fectious—having just returned from losing a “target” (hence the adaptation’s title)—is already in danger of being devoured by her superiors unless she adheres carefully to Daemon’s lectures. On the surface, the relationship between Daemon and Fectious seems to mimic that of Lewis’s Screwtape and Wormwood. However, the lack of an everyman’s soul in immediate peril automatically diffuses the tension found in Lewis’s source work. As a result, Payne and O’Neal attempt to replace this lost sense of urgency by forcing the instructor and student into physical proximity with one another, often relying on humor to create the production’s dramatic confl ict. 68 W. Barrett Huddleston Specifi cally, Daemon and Fectious’s relationship may be said to resemble that of commedia dell’arte’s Pantalone and Arlecchino in several respects. These characters or “masks” seem ideal for signifying “creatures” that, to use Lewis’s own words, are “higher in the natural order than ourselves” yet must “be represented symbolically if they are to be represented at all” (Screwtape ii). In Commedia Dell’Arte: An Actor’s Handbook, John Rudlin says the commedia masks “can never be mistaken for the representation of actual human beings…laughter is dependent on stereotyping, on objects of derision being less than human and objects of amazement more so” (35). In this passage, Rudlin intimates that the success of the commedia masks resides in their capacity to signify something more and less than an actual human for the spectator. Such a convention aptly serves the notion of theatricalizing celestial beings that are more powerful than humans but certainly not humane. Payne and O’Neal rely on this tension between the fantastic and inhuman throughout Target Practice. The resemblance between Daemon and Fectious and Pantalone and Arlecchino emerges in the characters’ costumes, relationships with one another, and the sundry tropes or “lazzi” each performs. Payne’s Daemon dresses as demonic Pantalone; he wears a comical red beard, including bushy, accentuated eyebrows, a hood and dark cloak. O’Neal plays a ribald Arlecchino to Daemon’s Pantalone, complete with wild hair and multi-colored bodysuit, a signature import to the role of Arlecchino. According to Maurice Sand, the outfi t “consists of a jacket open in front and laced with shabby ribbons, and skin-tight trousers, covered with pieces of cloth of various colors, placed haphazard” (61). It should be noted, however, that these costumes are severely “debased” versions of their commedia counterparts. Daemon’s hood and cloak possess an oily, shimmering blackness: Fectious’s costume resembles a patchwork of tatters. As a result, the pair appears a dark mockery of Pantalone and Arlecchino instead of a faithful transcription. Payne and O’Neal also manage to communicate the archetypal relationship between Pantalone and Arlecchino, that of tyrant-master and trickster-servant. Numerous commedia tropes are predicated on the slow witted but fl eet footed Arlecchino’s evasion from his quarrelsome master’s wrath.

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