With These My Hands of the Barbarian, was independently conceived and created by students from a wide range of disciplines and is directed by Joel Sena, who also performs in the piece. Performances are Saturday December 10th at 8 PM and Sunday December 11th at 3 PM at Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center, 2nd floor, between rooms 223 and 227.

The performance makes use of two seemingly opposed texts—a terse, burning solo performance text based on Euripides’ Medea by the 20th-century German poet Heiner Müller and the director’s adaptation of a 600-year-old Japanese Noh play called Yamauba. Both plays deal very powerfully with an individual who is scorned, distrusted, hated, betrayed and abused by the society that surrounds them. They are called barbaric and dangerous—the worst of the worst—shunned from the public discussion and made to sit silently in the margins. Yet, little is known about them and they continue to exist ambivalently (at best) in the public fantasy.

These texts are set in the surreal, eroding mind- and bodyscape of a suspected (but not accused) enemy combatant who is literally going mad in indefinite solitary confinement (possibly in Guantanamo Bay Prison) and is being subjected to what any conscious human being would call torture and a very real radicalization process. The Müller text represents the heat, fire, death-visions and tragedy of the mind’s collapse, while the Noh play provides a contrasting breath of air, the opening of a dialogue, a cause for hope and a reason not to perpetuate a cycle of retaliation.   

Two young actors provide Sena with help in performing this piece. One of the two actors, a current member of the National Guard, was introduced to Sena when he saw and was profoundly moved by Night Raid, another of Sena’s works produced earlier in the year. This actor is an International Studies major, intent on being a communicator who helps to bridge broad cultural gaps. He has met many people that have been and currently are in the Middle East and felt he could bring a special insight and knowledge to the project.

On the two days leading up to these scheduled performances, we will present the show in the middle of the day to students, teachers, and other passers-by in the form of a quasi-guerilla performance installation.

Nothing quite like this provocative theatrical activity has been seen before at WKU.  Come to be challenged and moved!