ARTicles vol.5 i.2a: “Away with the world behind the world!”

Angels play a crucial role in Ola Mafaalani’s theatre. They wander the stage in the periphery of the action, while love is often defeated by violence and human helplessness. The angels are observers, demonstrating compassion and sometimes imitating the violent habits of human beings. The number of lives lost in Mafaalani’s productions is high, but the dead never disappear by exiting the stage. They stay in view, hanging out at a bar or, as in her Romeo and Juliet (Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 2004), finding a new place behind a white paper wall that was slowly besmeared with black paint, and becoming visible when a raging Romeo tore down the paper. There, at the back of the stage, the dead can “live on,” observing us, the living, but no longer accompanying us. With brute force they are thrown out of time, and now they populate the world behind the world. In the context of our tormented existence, this eternity takes on an almost positive turn. But the worlds of the dead and the living stay separate; two different stories, told apart from each other.

In Wings of Desire we see the start of a new movement in Mafaalani’s work. For the first time angels are performing the lead roles, and the two distinct worlds find each other. In this new theatrical order, events, memories, dreams, and personal histories are cherished and function as the pillars of stories that we’re losing in these hectic times of hype and confusion. The angels Damiel and Cassiel are immortal and have existed from the beginning of time. They observe, imitate, and console people; they have a sharp eye for details and record major historical events, from the origins of man till the most recent wars. They know history and its stories great and small, as does Homer, the immortal poet who wanders the stage and teaches the audiences that people need stories to survive.

But Damiel doesn’t want to observe any longer; he yearns to experience reality, to feel a weight on his shoulders that will make him “earthbound,” as he puts it. He longs to gain a history, to conquer a story of his own. To stand in time. To live now. The instant he falls in love, this desire grows stronger. The girl, Marion, is a trapeze artist, who challenges gravity with her aerobatics, even at the risk of breaking her neck. For her, but also for the ultimate sensation of life, Damiel will exchange eternity for mortality.

In this fusion between an angel and a human being, a new story will be born, perhaps the start of a brand new history that encloses a seed of hope. In the worlds of Marion in her final declaration of love to Damiel: “There is no greater story than ours, of man and woman. It will be a story of giants, invisible, infectious, a story of new ancestors.”

Dirkje Houtman is the dramaturg at Toneelgroep Amsterdam.

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