Black Comedy
Peter Shaffer (1965)
From the playwright who brought us Equus and Amadeus, Black Comedy is a one-act farce written to be staged under a reverse lighting scheme – the title is a pun. It opens to a darkened stage, playing out in complete obscurity until a record player causes a fuse to short circuit.The stage is then illuminated as the characters are plunged into a “blackout”. It is a visual paradox, creating a descrepancy between audience and characters as the balance of what each party sees or doesn’t see is confused.
Seeing Things
Seamus Heaney (1991)
Heaney’s ninth collection is preoccupied with exploring the relationship between the imaginary and real. The poems merge mythical otherworlds where dead and living merge with images of Heaney’s own past. The title poem is a snapshot image of a boat ride to church, with “the deep, still, seeable-down-into water” holding the same terror as the waters of Hades. Heaney ends with telling us that ‘it was as if I looked from another boat’ – he surveys the domestic scene as though from a Godly height.
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
Salvador Dalí (1951)
In a parallel to “Seeing Things”, this painting from the godfather of surrealism depicts Christ on the cross from an extreme upward angle, as though from the perspective of God, or of the altar where such a figure would hang. Christ is seen floating in a black sky over a body of water in which can be seen boats and fishermen. Unlike usual images of the saviour, Dalí’s Christ is devoid of crown and wounds. Both this and the unusual angle of the painting allegedly came to Dalí in a dream.
