Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance)

                                    Karli Kadel for The New York Times

“Go to Berkeley make film, my friend” is one of the many throwaway lines in Richard Foreman’s Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance) currently playing at The Public Theater. But it turns out that Berkeley is also a reference to Bishop Berkeley the Irish idealist philosopher who believed that all of reality was subjective and would vanish were it not for the existence of God. His famous line was esse est percipi, “to be is to be perceived” and it’s probably no concidence that Foreman’s protagonist is Samuel (Rocco Sisto) and that another Samuel, Samuel Beckett used that very line as the epigram for his Film. “Words I have been saying and words that been tumbling back and forth in my head,” is just one of the many Foreman lines that recall Beckett’s tortured Cartesianism. Foreman begins Old-Fashioned Prostitutes with his signature shining of the stage lights on the audience. Then there is the crashing of glass and the voice over announcing "end of play. "Aficionados of Foreman will recognize the ubiquitous arcana: the turn of the century military uniform, the ancient portraits, words and letters hanging in space, the dotted line crossing the stage, the light bulbs, sounds of voices which ring through the air like memories, the barbells, the cigarette holder and the marching band drum.  Gabriel Berry and Yael Lubetzsky are credited with costume and lighting design but the late Roger Shattuck, author of the famed book The Banquet Years: Origins of the Avant-Garde in France-1885 to World War I  could be given a posthumous credit for a set which resonates the legacy of the neo-Dadaism that infuses the current production.

Life is a Dream

Life is a Dream (La Vida es Sueño) is the title of a classic 17th century work by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. But what if life is in fact a dream, the reality we think we perceive existing only in the mind of the dreamer? Who is the dreamer? And is he or she part and parcel of someone else’s dream, with the dreamer before that existing only as a figment in yet another imagination? Who, then, is the ultimate dreamer? Like Segismundo, the young Prince who has been husbanded away to prevent catastrophe, there is no end to doubting reality once the idea of this ultimate form of subjectivity is introduced as an explanation for existence. Bishop Berkeley believed all impressions were totally subjective, with reality only being verifiable by the existence of God. Esse est percipi—“to be is to be perceived”—was Berkeley’s mantra.

   

But the notion of life as a dream may be an excuse for irresponsible or immoral actions. This is something Calderón’s character grapples with. Is the dreamer allowed to rape and pillage at will, since his transgressions will essentially be victimless crimes? Are felonies simply quality-of-life crimes for dreamers?  Or is the dreamer obliged to deal with right and wrong, to censor his own wishful dreaming as it were, because of the fact that the universe he exists in, whosever mind it can ultimately be attributed to, is somehow lessened for being a high crime area? Are moral convictions earned even without the notion of a real world in which actions have consequences?  If I do something totally horrifying and conclude that it is only harmless dreaming, the horror is not less horrific. In fact, no longer being punished for his crimes, with no prospect of serving time in a penitentiary, the dreamer is never allowed penitence and the subsequent feeling of having paid his debt to society for damages incurred. Dreamers are as stuck when comes to solace as they are frustrated by the impossibility of consummation. The pure dreamer may never pay the piper, but he will also never satisfy any of his wishes.