Adam Giannone

Early in Dirt [Contained]'s production of GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, a caller on a radio show asks Lais (Tana Sirois), the successful but tormented actress at the center of Fernando Arrabal's 1960s play, if she was was really an orphan. When Lais responds in the affirmative, the caller expresses sympathy for her presumed suffering.Lais' response provides the audience what it needs to appreciate (if not exactly to enjoy) what follows, even if Andre Breton, Antonin Artaud, the Theatre of Cruelty, the Panic Movement, and surrealism in general are literary terra incognito (as they were to me, a former English doctoral candidate specializing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). But a little knowledge helps one to appreciate just how ambitious and complex a project this is. (I'm told Ferdando Arrabal, now in his 80s, made a special trip to America to see Dirt [Contained] perform his play. Having seen this extraordinary cast, led by the at once luminous and ferocious Tana Sirois, I can see why.) It may be my bias as a former academic, but the more one brings to GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, the more one gets out of it. My reading of and about Arrabal since the show has retroactively increased my respect for and pleasure in the play. Nathan Gorelick's characterization of Arrabal's work in the journal Discourse is apt: '[His] theater is a wild, brutal, cacophonous and joyously provocative world. In his violence, Arrabal is related to Sade and Artaud. Yet he is doubtless the only writer to have pushed derision as far as he did. Deeply political and merrily playful, his work is the syndrome of our century of barbed wire and Gulags, a manner of finding reprieve.'

GARDEN OF DELIGHTS is a surreal play that takes its audience on a fantastical journey following protagonist Lais, a charming, yet self-loathing actress, through a bizarre look at her sadomasochistic experience of love and art. Isolated in her home with only a caged beast-like partner and flock of infantile sheep to distract her from her troubled past, she spirals down into painful memories and erotic fantasies that blur the line between reality and imagination.

Dirt [contained], in association with Long Island City Artists, has announced that it will present GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, a surreal journey by Fernando Arrabal, directed by Maria Swisher, that dives head first into the psyche of a tortured artist, July 26th - August 13th at Plaxall Gallery (5-25 46 Avenue, Long Island City). www.dirtcontained.com