Vienna: Lusthaus by Martha Clarke

First published: 1987, in The Drama Review

First produced: 1986, at St. Clement’s Church, New York City

Type of plot: Surrealist

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Locale: Vienna

Principal Characters:

• Soldiers,
• Lovers,
• Skaters,
• Dancers, and
• Models, portrayed by an ensemble of eleven actors and six musicians

The Play

Vienna: Lusthaus is a series of forty-four dreamlike vignettes which sometimes overlap, sometimes occur simultaneously, and sometimes fade in and out of one another. As the performance begins, a pool of light reveals a couple slowly waltzing in center stage. A crowd begins to gather while a man and a woman converse. The man recounts the surrealistic scene that ensued when an acquaintance named Leonard flew across the seats in the opera, put his hand in the man’s mouth, and pulled out two of his teeth. The crowd exits, leaving a soldier alone onstage. In a movement sequence, he makes a gradual transformation from man to horse. He lowers his body to all fours before galloping offstage.

A couple waltzes across the stage. Two women, one in a dress and the other in a man’s suit, begin a slow waltz, stop, and hesitantly begin to remove their jackets. The room comes to full light when a young man begins to tell a story about his Aunt Cissi. Women in white undergarments gather in a doorway. As they approach the man on the bench, he becomes flustered while describing his aunt’s clothing. The women laugh and wave to him as he makes his hurried exit. A harpist plays a lush melody as the six women form a line.

The women sit or kneel on the floor as one describes a sexual encounter with a man in India several thousand years ago. An older actor begins to sing in German; two women sit on the piano bench and kiss. One tells of her mother who, carrying an armful of flowers one day, forgets to hold the banister, walks through an open window, and falls to her death. The soldier from the beginning of the piece approaches her. He grooms her like a horse, then the couple ride off as horse and rider.

In the next sequence, the older woman watches a younger woman in a lyrical movement phrase while a bearded man recounts the story of how he and his daughter watched a fountain from their hotel balcony. The water, he recalls, suddenly shot up in the air and directly into his daughter’s face. When he attempted to deflect the water, a woman called out from the hotel ballroom to let the girl get wet: “Otherwise what’s the point of life?”

A couple waltzes in. They caress in a tender, impassioned pas de deux while the older woman watches. She slips into the younger woman’s place so that when the man turns he embraces the older woman instead. Two nude women sit downstage right on a white sheet, their clothes scattered about them. They perform a symmetrical movement phrase, arching their backs and rolling their heads sensuously, as a violinist plays a brisk waltz. The music stops; the lights shift to illuminate the figures of a nude man and woman in a doorway. They begin a slow, sustained embrace, then exit as a man in a top hat enters and a nude man walks to upstage center. The man in the hat tells of the miracle he witnessed while standing along the banks of the Danube. He describes the sudden swelling of the river, which overflows its banks, and an ensuing rainstorm which drenches one bank but does not fall at all on the other side, leaving it in radiant sunlight. While he speaks, the nude man falls to the floor in agonized, contracted movements.

A half-dressed soldier enters with a young girl. He sits on the bench; she sits stiffly on his lap. He manipulates her arms and legs to accommodate his caresses. She remains expressionless, moving woodenly to the positions he desires, as though she is a doll. Throughout this sequence an accordion player and clarinetist play a brisk, dissonant song. The soldier carries the girl off when the song ends.

A soldier and a woman stand side by side. They both speak parts of the same story, but out of synchronization. They retell the opening story about Leonard. Each asks why he would want to do that—is he a Jew? The only answer is that so much of life is unaccountable these days. Each speaker then tells of stopping a young girl on a staircase to chastise her for a taunting remark she had made. Each recalls how he or she then began sexually molesting the child.

In the next scene, a young woman catalogs her many dislikes in time with a jaunty melody. A couple ride through, and three women dance across upstage. This cheerful scene quickly fades. In a pool of white light center stage, a man wearing white long underwear and a woman’s black shoes on his hands performs both parts of a sexual encounter. In the next sequence, a woman stands while a man lies at her feet, his head beneath her dress; she then sits on his face. Meanwhile a very properly dressed young woman unbuttons the jacket, vest, and shirt of an older man. They embrace and sit on the bench. The lights go out. When they come back up, a woman wearing only black stockings and black shoes sits on the bench posing coyly. She stands, exposing her carefully shaven pubic hair, and exits.

Then a woman in a black dress lies on the floor. At her feet, a soldier explores her body with the tip of his whip. Another man recites a list of his erotic conquests or rapes and the number of times he was with each woman. While he recites his list, the woman rolls onto her face and tries to crawl toward center stage. The soldier watches her while another young woman dances across the back of the stage. Then the soldier begins slowly removing his clothes. The young woman struggles with her jacket, but runs offstage. The soldier sits on a chair; his hands become like hooves as he struggles to unbutton his pants and remove his boots. This sequence is very tense and is accompanied by the plucking of violin strings.

At the end of this scene, the older woman reenters carrying a lantern and speaking in German. Snow begins to fall and the violin plays a sweet melody. Couples in winter clothing move as if they are skating; others waltz. A woman tells the story of her mother who woke up early one morning in pain and announced that she was going to jump out the window because she did not want to live anymore. A man tells of his Aunt Alexandra who was convinced that a large sofa was lodged in her head, making it impossible for her to leave the house. The women and soldiers skate or dance offstage, except the last speaker, who describes seeing a black and white butterfly on a green leaf. He explains that the butterfly did not move at his waving hand because it thought it was safely camouflaged even though it was really completely exposed.

The old woman reappears, drawing circles in the continually falling snow. Two soldiers march onto the stage; they fall into the snow face first, continuing to mark time with their boots. Their legs quiver; they stand and exit. A couple waltzes across the stage to the sound of the marching boots and a violin. The older man in the top hat reenters. He describes being unable to choke a gigantic rat he found in his room one night. He says he thought it was some kind of Greek fate, to be left forever trying to choke a rat.

A center pool of light comes up on a soldier lying with his bandaged head in a woman’s lap. She embraces him, but his body is lifeless. She begins to shake him; she rises and repeatedly hoists his body from the floor and bangs it down again. Eventually she stops. Skaters sail by as the snow continues to fall. The dead soldier asks the man in the top hat about how to tell when a person has been shot. The two discuss the physical transformation of death. The soldier asks what colors a body passes through in death. The other man answers light pink, red, light blue, dark blue, purple-red. The old woman crosses again with her cane. The pale lights fade out while the harp softly fades out to silence.

Dramatic Devices

Martha Clarke uses nudity as a dramatic device in Vienna: Lusthaus. Sometimes the actors turn shyly from the audience’s gaze and other times coldly face them as if they were voyeurs. Scenes of seduction and sexual passion are played alternately by women in layers of frilly, white Victorian underwear with men in full uniform, by nude women with clothed men, and by nude couples. The women in their lacy camisoles and petticoats are sometimes beautiful partners in acts of love and sometimes powerless victims of rape or incest. Nude women appear as objects of sexual conquest in some scenes, while in others they use their erotic presence to exert power over men or one another. Additionally, Clarke contrasts nude figures with clothed figures in scenes that simultaneously suggest beautiful and horrible images. In one scene, a gentleman in formal evening wear and a top hat describes the miracle of rain falling on only one side of a riverbank and speaks of his own awareness of witnessing this beautiful event. Meanwhile, the man who had transformed himself into a horse in the first scene stands nude upstage, gradually writhing in agony until he falls lifelessly on the floor. This kind of fragmentary juxtaposition of stage figures illustrates the relationship between man and animal, between pleasure and pain.

Another important device in Vienna: Lusthaus is the use of an ensemble rather than a cast of actors who portray specific characters. This allows the actors to change roles from scene to scene in the non-narrative framework of the performance. The speaking performers deliver their fantastic tales candidly; those who do not speak instill their movements with the same ingenuousness. This performance attitude further skews the logic of the text and movement. The use of an ensemble suggests that the themes are representative of all experience rather than peculiar to any particular “character” within the performance.

Clarke’s choice of the collage structure serves to layer the images and meanings; her use of cross-fading and blending lyrical scenes and illogical scenes dramatizes the dream form. A scene often begins only to be interrupted by a new movement sequence or a completely different monologue. Condensation and displacement of these fragmented images is then mirrored in text and choreography. The text, by Charles L. Mee, Jr., is largely composed of the writings of Sigmund Freud and Marcel Proust, observations from Mee’s own dreams, and phrases from conversations that might have been overheard in old Vienna. While most of the text is written as reminiscences spoken in monologue, the actors sound as if they are retelling dreams. In an early scene, a young man begins to talk about his Aunt Cissi’s obsession with her youthful beauty, but his musings are interrupted when a young woman is taken by a sudden memory of a sexual encounter with a man in India several thousand years ago. The flow of action and text is seamless; the delivery of the spoken text has the candor and clarity of dreams retold in a formal, clinical setting.

Clarke’s use of movement is the real substance of the work. Since more than half the scenes are wordless, Clarke uses movement to describe the same surrealistic structure of scenes and to link images with text. A man transforms into a galloping horse. A man enacts both parts of a sexual encounter. Soldiers march to their deaths, and women undress and kiss, pose coyly, or waltz and skate. The scenes collect Clarke’s ideas about sex, war, love, and fate, and culminate in the final scene of a woman embracing the body of a dying soldier under falling snow. While the movement sequence of this scene is violent and horrible, Clarke manages to blend pain with beauty in the subsequent dispassionate dialogue which asks and answers the soldier’s questions about the body passing through death.

Critical Context

Vienna: Lusthaus focuses on the daily activities, thoughts, and fantasies of fin de siècle Vienna, a city inhabited by Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Gustav Mahler, and Johann Strauss, as well as Adolf Hitler. This historical period has been the subject of numerous books and major museum exhibits, such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s “Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture, and Design.” A revival of interest in art nouveau and a nostalgia for the humanistic values and beauty of the nineteenth century surround Martha Clarke’s work. She says her inspiration for this piece was derived in part from her observations at a 1984 exhibition in Venice about late nineteenth, early twentieth century Vienna titled “Dream and Reality.”

Clarke’s synthesis of text, music, dance, visual environment, and mise-en-scène is similar to the work of German choreographer/director Pina Bausch and theatrical directors Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, and Peter Brook. This total theater, or “theater of images,” allows these artist to create thematically complex, multilayered performance art. Clarke’s work is distinguished by her characteristic use of detailed movement sequences to further explore the themes of the text. Vienna: Lusthaus is Clarke’s second major performance work. Some of the extraordinary movement sequences in this piece reflect the choreographic influence of her seven years with Pilobolus Dance Theater. With this company she collaborated on such works as Monkshood’s Farewell (pr. 1974) and Untitled (pr. 1975). The addition of collaborator Mee’s spoken text for Vienna: Lusthaus brings another dimension to Clarke’s already rich, disturbing works. Her earlier work, The Garden of Earthly Delights (pr. 1984), and later works such as The Hunger Artist (pr. 1987) and Miracolo d’Amore (pr. 1988) similarly synthesize dance, gesture, design, and spoken or sung text. Each of these pieces demonstrates Clarke’s unique vision in her articulate use of the human body. In Vienna: Lusthaus, Clarke is able to evoke both the beauty and the underlying decadence that signaled the city’s gradual decay and destruction.

Sources for Further Study

Acocella, Joan Ross. “Body and Soul: A Review of Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus.” Dance Magazine 60 (August, 1986): 40-45.

Clarke, Martha. “A Conversation with Martha Clarke.” Interview with Elizabeth Kendall and Don Daniels. Ballet Review 12 (Winter, 1985): 15-25.

Clarke, Martha. “Images from the Id.” Interview with Arthur Bartow. American Theatre 5 (June, 1988): 10-17, 55-57.

Martin, Carol. Review in Performing Arts Journal 10, no. 2 (1986): 88-90.

Mee, Charles L., and Amanda Smith. “Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus.” Drama Review 31 (Fall, 1987): 42-58.

Sadler, Geoff. “Martha Clarke.” In Contemporary Dramatists. 6th ed. Detroit: St. James, 1999.

Schorske, Carl. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Knopf, 1981.