The Law of Remains

The Law of Remains is a 1991 play by Los Angeles-based Iranian playwright, director and filmmaker Reza Abdoh.[1] The play, initially staged in a New York City hotel, was described in A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama as "an apocalyptic fantasia".[2] In its 1992 review, The New York Times characterized it as "one of the angriest theater pieces ever hurled at a New York audience".[3]

The seven-scene play focuses on violence and its social impacts, through the use of Andy Warhol’s aesthetics, incorporating police reports on the murders of Jeffrey Dahmer in exploring the deeds of fictionalized killer "Jeffrey Snarling".[3] It uses Dahmer's crime, particularly against an adolescent Laotian who almost escaped Dahmer until police presumed the conflict was a dispute between gay lovers, to create a metaphor for "governmental indifference to the AIDS crisis".[3] Anita Durst, an actress and disciple of Abdoh who procured the location, summarized the play as "Andy Warhol and Jeffrey Dahmer meet in Heaven".[4] The play is a non-linear multi-media presentation, adding to traditional dramatic structure a soundtrack of "death, sex and violence" and "raucous" imagery, both live and electronic.[5]

According to theater scholar Jordan Schildcrout, "Abdoh's assaultive use of loud noises and bloody images outside a traditional theater space is very much in line with Artaud's notions of a 'theater of cruelty,' intended to shock and provoke the audience. In this way, Abdoh uses a form of theatricality that does not offer enlightenment or catharsis but rather demands that the audience experience the brutality of Dahmer's crimes on a physical and visceral level."[6]

Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts' undergraduate senior theatre thesis group staged a reinterpretation of The Law of Remains in May 2011 at La Mama E.T.C in New York City.

References
  1. Dasgupta, Gautam (September 1994). "Body/Politic: The Ecstasies of Reza Abdoh". Performing Arts Journal. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 16 (3): 18–27. doi:10.2307/3245681.
  2. Krasner, David, ed. (2005). A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell Publishing. p. 546. ISBN 1-4051-1088-0.
  3. Holden, Stephen (February 26, 1992). "Theater in review". The New York Times. New York City: New York Times Company. Retrieved February 27, 2008.
  4. Traub, James (October 6, 2002). "The Dursts have odd properties". The New York Times. New York City: The New York Times Company. Retrieved February 27, 2008.
  5. Leiter, Samuel L. (2000). "Directors and direction". In Wilmeth, Don B.; Bigsby, C.W.E. (eds.). The Cambridge History of American Theater. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 485. ISBN 0-521-47204-0.
  6. Schildcrout, Jordan (2014). Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. p. 162. ISBN 9780472072323.
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