CEPHALONEGATIVITY: On the Theater of Decapitation
by Mike Corrao & Evan Isoline
by Mike Corrao & Evan Isoline
"Fully exploiting the Gogolesque conceit of a cephalophore whose body and head go their own separate ways, Cephalonegativity reads like Beckett’s Play (with M reprised as an even more slippery version of himself) or Not I as if performed by the secret society of Acéphale. Archaic turns of phrase and elision combine with post-cinematic headlessness to produce a stage play that plays with stages and stages play, a lesescenario from the velveteen tongue of an heretical zealot, its phrases as if slurped up off an abattoir floor, or off the rotted walls of a theatre-cum-poisoned-amniotic-sac where the performers have all become kuroko. Read out loud, at speed, in honour of its progenitors, the words turn into “chunks of hot pomegranate meat” in your mouth-turned-anus, with your gills agape, your mutinous soma exsanguinated, levitating above you, your head on fire singing like litel clergeon from the catacombs."
—Gary J. Shipley, author of 30 Fake Beheadings
"In pursuing a theatrical treatment of the Self's head and body and self-selves, through a Bataillean notion of headlessness, through typographical humor and rupture, through a Dada-esque document of volatile mirror-pages and chorus, Cephalonegativity makes of itself a gaping gesture: a neck-stub that is a mouth that is singing out and commenting on the ritual of being present. The reader dials in via "a rotary anus" and watches a body hanging as a tail in its coprolalic spooky plastic underwater gloom psychedelia cum outer space inside of a mouth cum cult orgy. "DO/ YOU SEE THE END OF TIME? THE APPROACHING/ WALL? WHEN THE THEATRICAL BECOMES THE/ APOCALYPTIC? ENACTING A DISTORTED REALI-/ TY AS THIN LAYERS OVER THIS ONE?" This text is a porous fabric through which we might perform the wound of the stage as we watch it rot."
—Olivia Cronk, author of Womonster
—Gary J. Shipley, author of 30 Fake Beheadings
"In pursuing a theatrical treatment of the Self's head and body and self-selves, through a Bataillean notion of headlessness, through typographical humor and rupture, through a Dada-esque document of volatile mirror-pages and chorus, Cephalonegativity makes of itself a gaping gesture: a neck-stub that is a mouth that is singing out and commenting on the ritual of being present. The reader dials in via "a rotary anus" and watches a body hanging as a tail in its coprolalic spooky plastic underwater gloom psychedelia cum outer space inside of a mouth cum cult orgy. "DO/ YOU SEE THE END OF TIME? THE APPROACHING/ WALL? WHEN THE THEATRICAL BECOMES THE/ APOCALYPTIC? ENACTING A DISTORTED REALI-/ TY AS THIN LAYERS OVER THIS ONE?" This text is a porous fabric through which we might perform the wound of the stage as we watch it rot."
—Olivia Cronk, author of Womonster
Mike Corrao is a multimedia artist and the author of six books including Smut-Maker (Inside the Castle) and Gut Text (11:11 Press).
Evan Isoline is a writer and artist living on the Oregon coast. He is the author of Philosophy of the Sky (11:11 Press) and the founder/editor of a literary project called SELFFUCK. Find him @evan_isoline.