In Hotel Cassiopeia, boxes, drawers and frames were used and appeared recurrently on stage. The background has never gone outside of the box; everything that happened has always remained inside the box. It might imply that, within the box, are the most memorable, most exquisite moments of Joseph Cornell’s life, and the fact that we, audience, are watching his eccentric inner world through a spy glass. It did seem as if things were juxtaposed, placed side by side, without a specific pattern or sequence. Yet, this is the style of Joseph Cornell–whether you like it or not. Perhaps it seemed a bit bizarre, abstract and puzzling.
I was really drawn into the performance; the performance seemed very mysterious from the beginning till the end. However, I enjoyed it. It made me think, not like the opera in which everything is explicit and unconcealed. It is presented, in a very subtle way; therefore, the audience had to contemplate a lot–Were the character, the events that took place realistic, or did they only exist in the inner world of the socially withdrawn artist? Even now, I am still trying to distinguish what was reality and what was Joseph’s imagination. The arrangement of objects, such as the chairs, the tea cups and the glass spherical object which I don’t know what it was, interested me a lot. The fact that the characters and the objects moved around a lot might suggest that they don’t have a fixed position in Joseph Cornell’s mind.
Watching the ballerina twitching her artificial wings, the chubby man wearing the wings ( what a big contrast…), the lady singing ” What is This Thing Called Love” and the men having hilarious conversations( or should I say arguing?), I couldn’t help but giggled a little bit. Overall, I must say this performance has a lot of interesting elements in it, and offers us a lot of new insights.
-Ruby
1 response so far ↓
1 eleung // Oct 14, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Oh wow. Ruby, I felt the exact same way. What was reality and what was imagination!? I could never get a grasp on reality and, therefore, the setting of the play. The first time he was talking to that woman (the one who said that people buy shoes and, then, do not wear them), I thought they were outside seeing each other. Then, the woman puts something down on his table. I said to myself, “Wait a minute! He is always in his basement. But why the heck would the woman come down to his basement or go inside his house to put something on his desk?” My mind extended beyond a fury of confusion.
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