Tristan And Isolde Poem by gershon hepner

While Isolde masturbated
Hassidic Jews in chorus,
kvelled, and feeling most elated,
cried: “We’re all a Taurus! ”
but when all the audience booed
our director crooned,
and with both his buttocks nude,
Liebestoding mooned.

Wagner was not overjoyed,
saying: “It’s no joke
seeing in my Tristan Freud
sniffing grains of coke.”
Seems it only is allowed
to reveal your arse
in Rio to a highbrow crowd
when it’s Mardi Gras.


Larry Rohter (The New York Times, November 11,2003) , describes a performance of Tristan and Isolde in the Teatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro in which, during the overture a woman sits masturbating on a sofa. Another scene has Sigmund Freud sniffing cocaine and tossing it into the air like confetti, and the production also features a chorus of Hasidic Jews and a fashion show.

So [the director, Gerald] Thomas responded in a way that many artists who feel misunderstood or unappreciated have undoubtedly dreamed of. As his leading lady looked on with a horrified expression, he turned his back, dropped his pants and green drawers and mooned the audience.
Now Mr. Thomas, the eternal enfant terrible of Brazilian theater, is paying the price. Acting on a complaint filed by the local chief of police, prosecutors have charged him with public indecency, and on Nov.11 he is scheduled to appear before a judge who will decide whether there are grounds to proceed with the case.
The indictment has startled artists and civil libertarians here. This is, after all, the notoriously permissive and even licentious city in which thousands of people parade virtually naked on the streets and over television during the annual Carnival celebrations — with the full approval of the same authorities who have now gone after Mr. Thomas.
Then again, Mr. Thomas has been a lightning rod since settling here nearly 20 years ago, bringing with him a passion for the avant-garde. Born in Rio, the child of a German Communist refugee from Hitler and a Welsh psychoanalyst of Lithuanian Jewish extraction, Mr. Thomas,49, spent his early adult years in London and then headed for New York, where he directed 18 Samuel Beckett plays at La MaMa from 1979 to 1984 before returning home. In a telephone interview from London, where he has temporarily taken refuge, Mr. Thomas acknowledged that his staging of 'Tristan und Isolde' was meant to be revisionist and provocative.



11/11/03