King Dude released an album called Fear in May 2014 with the express purpose of terrifying people. I've listened through it plenty a-time, and since I've never really been good at understanding lyrics, I didn't get much of that; I simply enjoyed the nice low-fi country rock sound. It is still a little bit disappointing, since I love scaring myself silly, but my inability to understand hindered me from experiencing the fear he was going for.
Butosov's production of Bulgakov's Flight, however, instilled a sense of terror in me that resonated even more than Guillermo Del Toro's eyeball-hand monster in Pan's Labyrinth, and I couldn't even understand a single word that came out of the actor's mouths. For the first time, the concept of theater had transcended any kind of language barrier for me; I was captivated by the sheer scale and force of everything.
And, I mean, that's pretty stinking cool if you ask me.
To me, fear can boil down to losing that subconscious feeling that everything will be alright; that subconscious knowledge in our heads that whatever is happening will soon end and you will be alright. And yet, sitting there in the audience staring at a trembling woman with white lights on her face as a black-haired woman gently floated along behind her tore apart any security I had and told me, and screamed to me, "you will not be okay." It was the most incredible feeling I've ever had in a theater. Even more so than when I broke into tears when the reprise of "He Lives in You" hits in The Lion King musical. Like an adrenaline fix from skydiving, I now crave it.
It's not hard to see the appeal of that fear; just ask literally any horror movie enthusiast. Somehow, though, I doubt that shock and terror on a scale of Birdemic was the intention of this production of Flight. Everything had meaning behind it, every object and every small snippet of dialogue, every ridiculous song in the second act. Even though I don't speak a lick of Russian I can understand there's far more going on than just a spooky scary evening at the theater. A tale of monetary greed and corruption, of the government in the Russian Civil War, of romance and suicide, and demented mania. For me, I could only touch the tip of that iceberg. In order to truly dive down that rabbit hole I'd have to understand their language, or aggressively study an english script. But that's a task for another time.
Fear is everywhere. Nobody is safe from it. Heck, you see it all over the news. In our everyday lives we casually build up our own defenses to that fear and resent things that scare us, which makes perfect sense. But when a theater production jam-packs fear directly into my skull with Skrillex-concert levels of bass, what's left? In my case, a scared little bald man who's been inspired by a strictly Russian play to be a better person, to understand himself and the world better. After all, once you stop thinking everything will be okay, what can you do from there? Seeing Flight made me want to figure that out. Seeing Flight showed me a nightmarish world filled with mania and defenses and a glimpse of what absolute fear is.
At least, that's what I got from it. Maybe I should've just enjoyed their blasting of Stacy's Mom and called it a night. \m/
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