Aniara – Dramaturgical analysis and concept idea

Jon Refsdal Moe, Professor of Dramaturgy

Firstly, it didn’t make much sense for me to only work with cantus 40 as I need, in elaborating a dramaturgical concept, to grasp an idea of totality, or perhaps better, cohesion – this is what I do as a dramaturge, elaborating a cohesive unit, call it the drama, out of the various elements being presented, as an analytical-creative process.

In reading this work, I have before me 103 songs, sung or told by different voices, all passengers on the doomed spaceship Aniara, telling the story as it happens, but also retrospectively, as to what has happened.

The storyline is quite simple, but therefore also complex. The spaceship – or Shuttle – Aniara is heading towards a planet in outer space with a vast number of refugees/ colonizers from earth, as earth needs time to heal and grow without humans. They are heading towards a new future. After crashing into an asteroid, Aniara veers off course and drifts out into deep space, with no hope of ever reaching anywhere. Like we all do, I guess. This means that there really is no drama going on in the sense of action, all the main events have already happened before we begin our reading.

There is no redemption in this exodus, no catharsis in this tragedy. Which dramaturgically makes it trickier but also more interesting. It is an exodus towards a promised land that will never be reached. What we have is the long, eventless journey ahead, towards nothing. And we must try to make sense of that

My pre-understanding of Aniara was as a science fiction epic, and I immediately began looking for some main characteristics, or rather, contradictions, juxtapositions, and complementarities that characterize this genre as I know from as Mary Shelley´s Frankenstein (1818), and from films such as Stanley Kubrick´s 2001 (1968) Andrej Tarkovsky´s Solaris (1972), and perhaps most importantly - Ridley Scott´s Alien (1979). These works all discuss some fundamental ideas of modernity, about nature and civilization, the Faustian pact and promise of technology vs. the fall from grace of a lost origin, Apollonian vs Dionysiac energies, as well as the conditions of civilized society and rationality vs. the looming threat of the id.

These topics are all very present in this work, and it surely has served as inspiration to the latter works mentioned. However, it is not an explicit discussion of modernity I see present in this work, and I would therefore not be able to fit it into a conceptual frame of a critique of modernity, which characterizes the genre and which would certainly fit our task very well, as the scope of this project is within the frame of creating performing arts with reduced climate impact.

However, more than a reflection on modernity and its discontents, I connected Aniara back to much older narratives, who certainly also are fundamental to that discussion as well. I read it as an epiphanic tale with many parallels to the Biblical stories of the Exodus and the Expulsion, also with references to the Fall of Babylon, the Revelation, and the Deluge (cantus 40). One of my strongest associations was to the cantus 40 was the medieval Draumkvedet from Norway (the dream vision or poem), the person who returns from the beyond and tells a mystic tale of what he has seen.

Some of these references are made explicit, others are present in the metaphors, some in the narrative ground structure. There are also explicit references to visionaries from Greek literature and tragedy: the blind Teiresias and Cassandra (cantus 26). Also, most of it is written in Iambic Pentameter which not only adds an archaic quality to the poetry, but which also connects to John Milton´s Paradise Lost.

There is, however, not only one lost paradise in this epic. There are two. And this double loss is what will be fundamental to my approach. Also, this is what I regard as fundamental to the poem’s theatricality.

Firstly, we have the lost paradise of Nature. In this respect the poem could be read as an elegy to a lost origin, which would easily play into the contemporary strong narrative of Ecological Grief.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, we have the lost paradise of Mima. The Mima is a manufactured structure comprising the memories and perceptions of the passengers – into which they can tap to re-live or experience dream states of their life before their fall from grace. A databank, or a vast artificial intelligence, something resembling the Squids in Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995) or Mother in Scott´s Alien (1979), the specific nature of the Mima is hard to pin down. And rightfully so. Like the Zone in Andrej Tarkovsky´s Stalker (1979), the Mima exists primarily as something not defined, and something that should not be defined, and which exists primarily as absence. What we know of the Mima is that it was made up of human consciousness, and that it self-destructed as it was overwhelmed with trauma and negative imagery from those who used it. To me, the Mima is not only representative of the Other, i.e., the always hidden or absent meaning that defines us and to which we always try to return – it is a metaphor for human creativity as such, that is – the Mima is not only the lost meaning, it is also the quest for meaning – the quest to try and make sense of things. In this respect, the Mima is a metaphor for art itself, making, and thinking as such. Mima is Mimesis. And when the Mima self-destructs, it is not only meaning that is lost to us, but it is also the ability to search for meaning. Or to draw another parallel to Tarkovsky – The Mima is not only the Zone. She is also the Stalker, the Writer and the Professor searching for the Zone. In this respect, it is easy to explain the Mima´s suicide by invoking Adorno´s famous dictum that it is impossible, or in his own words barbaric to write poetry after the Holocaust, also given that this poem is written in the wake of this great catastrophe, and of the great catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are present, although implicitly, in the writing. (Another more contemporary association that comes to mind is the onslaught of violent imagery that humans are constantly served via algorithmically designed social media channels, and how these affect our creativity negatively)

After the Mima´s suicide, the passengers of Aniara experience a sense of loss that they try to heal in several ways such as sex and fertility cults, authoritarian religion etc., taking place
in the shattered Mima hall, which will go on until the population of the ship has gone extinct. I am here reminded of Isiah 21: ‘Babylon has fallen, has fallen! All the images of its gods lie shattered on the ground!’.

The nameless Mimarobe, who has acted as a high-priest or operator of the Mima sets out to create a second Mima, not to evoke it but to imitate it, i.e. engage a mimetic, creative process for the passengers to re-experience the Mima knowing that the Mima has already died. And in this, the Mimarobe is making art. The Mimarobe creates a piece of theatre. As opposed to the religious rituals or cults who try failingly to re-invoke the Mima by some miracle, the Mimarobe knows that he can only come as close as artistic representation gets him. He tries, then, heroically, or barbarically, to write poetry after the Holocaust has taken place. As we all must do.

So, for a dramaturgical concept, I think we could begin with the Mimarobe´s imitation of the Mima. That can create the framework of our performance. By simple theatrical means, we can show the images of that which has been lost to us, also by putting the creative process (the Mimesis) on display. I am thinking simple visual effects such as Laterna Magica, Zoetrope and dream machines, acoustic instruments, small intimate setting, and easily transportable set, very few actors etc.., putting the mimarobe´s spectacle on display, also invoking several of the other discourses I have mentioned here, also making it our own spectacle. That is the Mimarob´s mimesis of the Mima parallels our attempt, via a mimetic or creative process, to make sense of Aniara, and of our own world. As we are doing something with Cantus 40, the space cadet´s tale could create the framework for the Mimarobe´s spectacle. As a tale of a journey to another planet, it has much potential for image-making.