O'Neill's Grotesque Dancers

O'Neill's Grotesque Dancers JAMES A. ROBINSON·e· AS A POET of the theatre, Eugene O'Neill recognized the value of stage movement. Like all playwrights, he knew that gesture and stage position reveal character; unlike most, he was also interested in broader movements of individuals and groups to reveal theme. Nietzsche's praise of the Dionysian dance in The Birth of Tragedy, Kenneth Macgowan's emphasis on movement and music for the Theatre of Tomorrow, Max Reinhardt's pageant plays,I and Gordon Craig's desire to bring "Dancing, Pantomime, Marionettes, Masks; these things so vital to the ancients"2 back into modern theatre - all exerted their influence on the young American dramatist. O'Neill seemed especially intrigued with the thematic possibilities of movement during his expressionistic period, when several of his plays exhibited bizarre, distorted dances or motions in accordance with their grotesque themes. Grotesque variations on the graceful movements of dance in The Emperor Jones, The Great God Brown, and Desire Under the Elms, for instance, served to point up man's alienation and domination by irrational passions. Mechanical motions also intrigued the playwright, and appeared in group movements of Jones, The Hairy Ape and Lazarus Laughed in conjunction with the themes of alienation from one's self, from modern society, and from life itself. Finally, in Lazarus Laughed, O'Neill choreographed mass movement on a grand scale in an attempt to restore theatre to the religious position it held in ancient Greek society; but again, the motions assumed modern, grotesque forms to express the play's central theme of man's perversity. For O'Neill's thematic use of movement was basically modern , functioning in these experimental plays to emphasize his major 341 342 JAMES A. ROBINSON themes of the irrational, alienation, and the tragicomic condition of mankind . The dance particularly fascinated the dramatist, and Egil Tornqvist notes that "dancing or dance-like movements occur in many of the plays, usually as an expression of an affirmative attitude toward life."3 That is the case in Desire Under the Elms, certainly; the absurd capers of Simeon , Peter and Ephraim Cabot dramatize the vigorous vitality of primitives living close to nature, as well as the power of the irrational passions that dominate them. Similarly, the witch doctor's grotesque contortions in The Emperor Jones represent the intense demonic forces within the collective unconscious which overpower Brutus lones. Only in The Great God Brown does the distorted dance seem forced and strained, the movement of modern, confused men trying to convince themselves they are passionate pagans. But in all three plays, the dance assumes thematic importance , expressing contrasts between the conscious and unconscious, animal and human, adjustment and alienation. The witch doctor's dance in Jones is preceded and followed by other distorted motions which reveal the presence of the demons of the irrational unconscious. Outside the Great Forest in scene two, Jones encounters the Little Formless Fears "striving to raise themselves on end, failing and sinking prone again" (III, 189)4. When they "squirm upward toward him in twisted attitudes" (190), their bizarre movement provokes terror in the protagonist; for they suggest the mystery of the repressed unconscious from which they spring, and foreshadow the horrors which await Jones within the forest. The mechanical creatures of scenes three, four and five (discussed below) further dramatize the fear and confusion of the clever Jones in the wilderness of his id. But in scene six, the motion of the slaves on the ship is much smoother, "as ifthey were laxly letting themselves follow the long roll ofa ship at sea" (199). lones's response objectifies his approach-avoidance conflict at this point. At first, a "shudder of terror shakes his whole body" (199), but gradually he falls under the spell (of the unconscious) and "rises to a sitting posture similar to the others, swaying back and forth" (199). In his reduced state, he can no longer resist the primitive racial unconscious, and becomes directed by forces he has heretofore defied. lones's response to the witch doctor's dance in scene seven is similar. After initial fright, he is ''paralyzed with awedfascination" by this strange figure's chant...