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Pufferfish
At the front door of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Iron Crow Theatre’s production of Apartment 213, a piece of paper is passed out. It isn’t a program. It’s a Xeroxed, handwritten note that describes with some fondness and a little regret the hobby of raising exotic fish in a tank.
“It was nice, with African cichlids and tiger barbs in it and live plants, it was a beautifully kept fish tank, very clean … I used to like to just sit there and watch them swim around, basically … It’s a fun hobby. I really enjoyed that fish tank. It’s something I really miss.”
To put things into context: the note was taken from an interview of Jeff Dahmer, the all star, early 90’s serial killer who, along with John Wayne Gacy, has provided lots of material for pop philosophers, standup comics, sociologists, and even a few artists. His life, aside from the 17 murders, was a boring one. But his famous fishtank, in his immaculate apartment, apparently gave him a little bit of a hobby.
We’ve seen him in the movies. Books have been written about him – most notably, one by his own father, about the raising of a serial killer. Slayer wrote a song about him. There’s been a musical. Now, there’s a play (or, if you will, a play that borders on a performance piece), in which Joe Ritsch, a Baltimore-based actor/playwright plays the cannibal/murderer.
Apartment 213 is one of those plays one leaves without being quite sure what you’re supposed to say about it, or whether you should say anything about it. A director “gets” Hamlet, or “gets” Checkhov. But noone really wants to say that they get Jeff Dahmer, Dahmer himself included.
But I can’t help thinking that Dahmer himself would probably agree with Ritsch’s decision to open with his description of a fishtank. In it, Dahmer describes the view of puffer fish, pressing their noses against the fish tanks. They float around, trapped and helpless, blowing bubbles, staring at the observer, without explaining exactly what it is they’re thinking or even what they want to do.
The play occurs in the iconic apartment that, for many of Dahmer’s victims, represented their dead end. There are video displays of the names of victims, which roll by in a tape loop. There’s a memorable display of the assembly
line of a chocolate factory. Both of those visual moments seem to press at the boundaries of comprehension, as if there was some Kaballic significance to them, but one which we’ll never know, because we’re separated by glass.
In the theatre drama usually takes on the task of bringing a character to life. Apartment 213 skirts the edges of moral and emotional paralysis. Dahmer opens the play staring at a list of his victims, in a hypnotized limbo. Ritsch’s portrayal of Dahmer is only punctuated by violence; for the large part of this (quickly passing) play he is staring at himself as if he was an exotic, but inaccessible, pufferfish himself. Ritsch’s attitude is worn, worried, and uncomprehending, but linked to his audience by a strange fascination both with his victims and with his own impulses .
Ritsch himself, a 41 year old actor, adds a few years to the life of the original Dahmer. That could be appropriate. Two decades after he decorated the cover of Newsweek, Dahmer is an exotic blast from the past in the fishtank that we now call history.
The victims themselves, deftly played by one actor, Will Manning, are part of Dahmer’s own underwater landscape. They are, first and foremost, exotic fish. Dahmer has exerted pride of ownership over them. In their brief appearances, they struggle against their own victimhood. But we aren’t sure what they want, how they arrived here, or what they think of Dahmer.
There’s nudity, too. But full frontals have come a long way since the end of “Wit” left community theaters across the country scrambling for bodysuits. When, as a victim, Manning strips off all of his clothes, it doesn’t expose anything new about the victim; it gives Apartment 213, and the play itself, a cinematic, flat-screen quality.
The audience remains pressed against the glass. A few feet away, the action is viewed as if from a fish tank. Apartment 213 doesn’t last long enough for us to become familiar with Dahmer. Just long enough for us to peek in the fishtank, and wonder – as he himself presumably did – what the figures on the other side of the glass are thinking. We are on the verge of making a connection, and then we step back. Then we move on, trusting the thoughts and images to perculate, bubble, and flounder in our minds until, one morning, we wake up to find them floating upside down.
Theater of the fishtank: endlessly fascinating and visually striking, but separated by an elaborate filtration system and a transparent, but uncrossable, barrier. The closer we get to the action, the further we are from the world of responsibility or empathy. When dealing with Dahlmer, the form fits the subject. Kudos to Iron Crow Theater for recognizing that.
Apartment 213 is up for its last weekend at Emmanuel Episcopal Church through the 13th. Check out the website at Iron Crow Theater.
[...] approached Apartment 213 aggressively, I confess. I went to the show ready to bend it to my own purposes, an opportunity to [...]
November 23, 2010 12:17 am