Watching the Tiger

Over the weekend, William and I saw Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, an intense, metaphorically lush and often surprising play about war, the afterlife, and a golden toilet seat. It's a comedy, ostensibly and occasionally, but also a philosophical diatribe, a theological shout of despair, and a psychological exploration of guilt, artistry, and the lingering effects of devastating loss.

The play opens with the tiger caged, center stage, pacing back and forth. One of the two soldiers guarding him is enthralled: "He's hungry," he says, walking around the cage to get a better look. The tiger is neither alive nor caged for much longer, but the image is vivid, and when I left the theater, I was thinking of Kafka: not his Tiger, sleeping in the training cage (there are no trainers in Rajiv Joseph's Baghdad, just as there are no gods or commanding officers) but his panther.

At the end of A Hunger Artist, the Artist dies, the rather unsurprising consequence of fasting for as long as you possibly can. His death isn't very troublesome to him, but he's very disturbed, in his final days, to see that the public has ceased to find him interesting at all: they have no interest in watching him starve, and walk right past his cage towards the animals. Suffering from starvation and artistic frustration, the Artist fades away. The circus supervisor who witnesses his death immediately has him replaced by a far superior act:

“All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And they buried the hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a young panther. Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing to see this wild animal prowling around in this cage, which had been dreary for such a long time. It lacked nothing. Without thinking about it for any length of time, the guards brought the animal food whose taste it enjoyed. It never seemed once to miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to the point of bursting, even appeared to carry freedom around with it. That seem to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came with such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to keep watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage, and had no desire at all to move on.

Unselfconsciously, vibrantly alive, this panther bears little resemblance to the painfully self-aware, existentially struggling, and very much dead Tiger of Joseph's play. The Tiger misses his freedom, carries only guilt in his teeth, and is generally a ragged, aged, despairing creature.

But while it was the pacing big cat that reminded me of the story, neither the play nor that final Kafka scene are really about the caged creatures. It's all about their admirers: the hapless soldier who can't look away from the Tiger, the audience enchanted by the wholeness of the panther. It's perfectly appropriate that A Hunger Artist ends with a description of the spectators, the real stars of the story all along, whose attention was the "main purpose" of the Artist's life.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, too, is full of restless, pacing performers, always seeking a spectator. The ghosts haunt their friends and murderers not from malice or compulsion, but because no one else can see or hear them: what's the point of being, they suggest, if no one can tell you're there? What's the point of doing, if no one is watching?

So the Tiger lingers in the bedroom so that Kev will watch him; Kev shouts furiously at Tom, wanting him to stay, to listen; Kev lingers in Tom's life just to be heard. Musa brings his sister to his garden so she can see his handiwork, risking everything he cares about for the sake of a single, appropriately-admiring spectator. Uday is downright obsessed with having an audience: "Look at me," he hisses. Watch this. Watch what I'll do next.

Nothing in this play happens behind closed doors: everything, everything, is witnessed. Sex happens in front of a furious audience of one, Kev changes into his gear before Musa's baffled eyes, thefts are always observed and never surreptitious, death is a spectacle. There's always an on-stage audience... except for when the characters are praying. And then they are begging for God to watch and listen, pleading for the ultimate spectator.

It's a perfectly theatrical obsession: audience audience where's the audience are they looking are they watching have we filled all the seats are they leaving are they laughing are they clapping are they watching

And it has an interesting omission, particularly notable if you compare this war play to Black Watch, currently at Shakespeare Theater. Bengal Tiger has no cameras, no screens. There is no suggestion that wars today can have spectators halfway around the world, glued to computers and TVs, rewinding to watch explosions over and over again.

Maybe those spectators aren't good enough. Maybe you need to see your audience, look into their eyes as they watch you: maybe it's one of the many alienations of war that you are disconnected from your audience.

But perhaps Joseph is making a broader point: these soldiers guarding a zoo, this lowly translator, they were never going to get that audience. No one was ever watching along from home. All they had was each other: no other witnesses at all.