Why

Back in the mists of time, the Brussels Shakespeare Society put on a play at a theatre in the Schaarbeek district of the town that was, at least then, known as the Scarabaeus. A scarab is an Egyptian good-luck charm, except in the case of this theatre. It is council-owned but was then leased out to a theatrical two-hander, the principal player in which was the wife, whose name was (not) Hippolyta.

Image: the stage door to the Scarabaeus Theatre, Schaarbeek.

Hippolyta had something of a reputation among amateur theatre companies in the city, although I myself had never encountered the woman and wouldn’t have known her from the Queen of the Amazons. That was until I became a set-builder on a play being done by a group of Hispanics. One director of my acquaintance had advised that she needed treating with kid gloves and that he had experienced some awkwardness with her, but had always managed to get what he needed from her, besides her sass.

During the run of the play initially referred to above, the theatre’s management had contrived to lock a door that offered access to the far side of the stage, which they did during the actual performance. Actors piled out of the dressing room, only to find their path to the correct wing of the stage barred by this locked door. The management advised that this passageway to the far wing of the stage had not been included in the rental agreement and that use of it was therefore not allowed, failing any compensation for the facility. The Society was annoyed, shall we say.

My own familiarity with the theatre, besides a couple of miscellaneous events that I attended there, came just before Covid, when I was asked to build the set for that play put on by a Spanish theatre company—the classical El anzuelo de Fenisa (Fenisa’s Hook) written in 1617 by Lope de Vega. Part of the set would comprise a couple of magicians’ boxes, essentially two flats turning on their vertical axis, but given depth for solidity, in case someone bumped into them. To add stability, a small, offset door was incorporated into one side whereby bricks could be placed into it, thus considerably lowering its centre of gravity. It was a cool design and was very ably decorated by a brilliant Rumanian artist I knew, who produced magnificent decor on these very simple-looking but carefully designed constructions. One scene was depicted on one face, and another scene on the other face, with the sides simply being painted black, since they depicted nowhere. When it came to assembling the boxes, on the day of the dress rehearsal, it was discovered that our Rumanian friend had inadvertently painted the incorrect side of the panel with the door cut into it: it could not be reversed because of the door being offset to one side. “No matter,” I said, “before the cast arrive for the first performance tomorrow, I will come in early and paint the unpainted side panel the requisite black colour.”

Come the next day, the management of the theatre asked me what I was intending doing.

“Just painting this panel,” said I, and I explained why, with a cheery smile.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” came the reply.

“Oh?” I queried.

“You’re not opening a pot of paint in my theatre.”

“I will put down a dust sheet, no worry,” I said.

“No.”

“Then open the rear stage door and I will take the scenery out onto the street and paint it there.”

“No. I’m not opening the door and letting the heat out.”

At this point, I started to count to ten, but, unfortunately, only reached eight (I’ll leave out the expletives).

“For a week, we have been treading on eggshells to avoid crossing you or annoying you or doing anything that might be against your written and unwritten rules, and we have taken every care to make sure we smile and are pleasant and say good morning and good afternoon and goodbye and, quite honestly, you’re the same old cantankerous gorgon that you ever were, and we did it all for nothing.”

The show’s director swiftly intervened and said it would be better if I left, with which I complied. I don’t know if the scenery ever got painted as it should be, but what I considered righteous anger in his, not my, behalf was taken by him as upsetting his applecart. It was far better to not paint the scenery for his play than to upset the theatre manager. Even with the fact that a huge amount of very hard work had gone into producing these boxes, transporting them, erecting them, painting them, nobody was interested that the builder’s pride was clearly less meritworthy than the demands of the people who’d done nothing more creative towards the production than leasing out the space in which to perform the play. The story doesn’t stop there.

I would later be refused a part in another play by the first-named theatre group, on the grounds that it was to be performed at the self-same theatre; I was even asked not to buy a ticket to come and see it. Shortly after that other play had been performed, Hippolyta was evicted from the building by the council, on grounds of mismanagement of the premises. I had not been the only one to have an issue with her administrative techniques. But others in the amateur dramatic circles deemed it far more important to acquiesce in Hippolyta’s unreasonableness than to risk them not being able to rent the theatre from her at all (not even for ready money, as Wilde’s Merriman might’ve said).

These episodes demonstrate a conflict of paradigms. Some will take a stance that avoids all and any disruption because, in a small and tight-knit community, disruption is undesirable. Yet, unfortunately, there are those who precisely recognise that disruption is indeed unwanted and, being in a position of influence or control, are therefore able to set stumbling blocks and hindrances and yet never incur any true wrath by those who are inconvenienced, because the stick in the mud has a broad discretion to exercise, to which it is deemed to be in everyone else’s best interests to submit.

Disruptors, as many are perceived, call out injustices to appellate instances which, then, to the consternation of all, simply endorse perverse exercise of the prerogative. One comes to realise that complaining and protesting, far from achieving change, bring only exclusion for the protester, whose calls are unlikely to fall on the ears of anyone with any power to heed them: they are preferably silenced rather than being allowed to continue to disrupt in a manner that, in any event, others perceive as being in vain. The current student protests are a classic case in point, with somewhat graver consequences than my own being barred from an Egyptian-inspired theatre.

A year ago and more, a Russian mercenary gave a frank online interview describing in enough detail to shock how he and his comrades in arms had gathered together Ukrainian civilians in a sports centre in Ukraine and then sprayed them with bullets. They included men, women and small children aged five and less. They were all sprayed with gunfire until the cries ceased. When asked why he had complied with the order to do this, he replied that the orders had been given by Yevgeny Prigozhin and that failure to comply would not have in any way prevented the slaughter, but simply added him who refused to the final tally of the dead.

There are many definitions of what constitutes democracy, and democracy can take on a whole variety of forms. We have the philosophical definitions of freedom and equality as given by Plato and we have modern parliamentary democracy in European nations or under the American constitution, and even under questionable regimes like Zimbabwe, the Russian Federation and Iran. It can be difficult to discern which regimes are democratic and which are not.

But, when push comes to shove, the test of a democracy can transpire to be remarkably simple. It is whether the ordinary citizen, when commanded to do something by the ruling authority is entitled honestly to ask the person in command to tell him why. If authority can respond in a manner that goes beyond because it’s the law—even supposing it can do that—by explaining the rationale for the law and why the law is a good law, then, one has at least the beginnings of a democracy. But if because it’s the law is followed by enforcement of that law—even by violent means, Brobdingnagian in their execution—those who cast ballots in elections must question why they bother to play their role in a drama with such flimsy decor. And, if democracy is what we actually want, the time has, at that point, come for revolution.

Either that, or you’re simply barred from the show.