Battles Don’t End, and they Never Have – Tuesday, 6 October

About 30 years ago, the great English theatrical director Peter Brook wrote and staged a 9-hour production called “The Mahabharata” which was based on a 3000-year-old Sanskrit epic which told the story of feuding dynasties that engaged in horrifying wars of extermination, with millions of men being killed, and how that affected the survivors and families and tribes way beyond the battlefields.  Friends of mine who saw it tell me that their memories of it are still vivid and it was one of the most spectacular productions they have ever seen. 

In my fabulous row 2 seat!

Well, in August I read that Peter Brook, who is now 90, and his long-time collaborator Marie-Hélène Estienne, along with writer Jean-Claude Carrière, had returned to the text to create a new play called “Battlefield” which expands on one section of “The Mahabharata.” It would receive its world premiere at Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Brook’s home base when he lived in Paris) in October, after which it would travel to the Young Vic in London. I love this 140-year-old out-the-back-door-of-Gare-du-Nord theater with its traditional horseshoe architecture and multiple balconies (it makes Minneapolis’ Southern Theater look new!), and the show was in English with French supertitles, so I jumped online right away and nabbed a primo row 2 center seat for just 32 euro – what a deal!

In “Battlefield” a young soldier who is “royalty” in the Bharata family comes home after the war, revealing some of the horror that happened there and learning from his aged mother and uncle about the fate of other family members and of friends in neighboring tribes. He resists when they tell him that he must now become king. They reflect on their complicity in the conflict and what they must do with the rest of their lives.

Using just four actors, one spectacular Djembe drummer, poetically-structured text, and minimal props and shawls, they draw you into the story and their lives. It’s not unmitigated angst – there are some very funny and tender moments – and the characters don’t make sense of everything – but you go away with the sense that you have participated in something universal (and, sadly, have seen parallels in today’s world).

At the end of the show I just sat there searching my brain for a term to describe the experience, without much success.  The French woman sitting next to me with limited English (we had exchanged pleasantries before the show) said “magical.” It’s kind of a strange application of the term, but I think she got it.