This is a play about love and it’s opposite, the slow and excruciating withdrawal from it. The tremulous meeting of particles. The devastating backwards movement, away from the point of meeting. The escape velocity, so powerful, attraction is not going to keep these particles together.
A woman in black takes an eternity entering space. A few of us sit witness to her process of entry. One foot at a time, atom by solitary atom. We shared breath, the same air went into all of us and the same air came out. We were within the performance, in the penumbra of the actor’s light.
Just a woman, a sheet, a black box theatre and the as yet inert bodies of the audience. Perhaps our minds travelled with us though, for in those early moments, we sat, resistant. Gravitational force rock solid.
Black Hole is researched, written, directed and performed by Jyoti Dogra. Through ideas from Theoretical Physics, in particular, Stephen Hawking’s collaborations on gravitational singularity and his gigantic work on Black Holes, she makes a moving case for our emotionality, for the deliberate experiencing of life, love and loss. How does she do this, you may well ask. How does one decode thermodynamics, singularity, event horizon, and create a play about a woman’s yearning and wonder?
Extract the poetry in Hawking’s words: “..at the end of all of this, the fact that we humans, who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature, have been able to come to an understanding of the laws governing us, and our universe, is a great triumph.” Dogra nails this in her piece, because she drags the aforementioned laws of physics into the ambit of human experience and with fine sleight of hand, draws her audience in. She highlights Hawking in neon: “It would be an empty universe indeed if it were not for the people I love, and who love me.”
There is an irresistible power in the performance area that will suck her into itself. It is invisible, we are singularly aware of it. We will be sucked in too. She stands precariously on the edge of this “thing”, wanting to be subsumed. But there’s nothing there. She doesn’t jump in, but flirts with the possibility of loss of the self.
Does she wish to be consumed or subsumed? Her dying mother says: “If the only parts of us that make it to space are helium particles, that means I will get to space when my body is burned?” Entangled bodies, in time, move further and further away from each other. The more I watch, the more I get drawn in. Time is tested. Sound seems like it is receding. The white sheet makes an appearance, rectangular and definite.
A shape that children study - circle, triangle, square, RECTANGLE. A rectangular sheet on a rectangular patch of light. Finite, no shape shifting as yet.
Referencing a Gregorian chant, the actor relates both the unfathomability and optimism of physics. A helium particle will take 1,200,821 light years to cover a distance of 6000 light years at only 5 per cent the speed of light, but boy, it WILL make its way out of space.
Theoretically, whatever helium is contained in, or, that the dissolution of our mortal bodies, releases, will make its way to outer space. The promise of transcendence, is this.
If Dogra rolls up the two dimensional white sheet, steps on a corner and twists it upwards, what will happen? A tornado? More dimensions? A change in the energy field as well as in the intention of the actor? If she twists this downwards, like a coiled snake, we will have a central hole contained by the rolled sheet.
A hole that could well spin her out of all that is familiar and accepted in the world as we know it. Love lasts, death follows life, our entangled bodies are ephemeral. Really?
Particulate this and let’s see what transpires. Fingers, mouths, shoulder blades, bellies…We break down into parts and further, particles and then, sans will, are simply slaves to the Laws of Physics. And the laws themselves are poetic.
These are impressionistic takes on watching Jyoti Dogra’s Black Hole . It was two months later, that a zero budget, world circumventing, hitchhiking teenager, gave me Stephen Hawking’s book - Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Signing off with a thought inspired by Hawking.
Know this with certainty: our past determines our future.
Time is a continuum. Even a small shift in the past can cause cataclysms to our future.
Jyoti Dogra’s Black Hole plays at Bangalore International Centre, as part of IFA@Bangalore | Festival | Past Forward: Celebrating Critical Practices on October 30, 2019.
