The Lament of the Onion Cutter
Theresa Sofianos’s visceral 45-minute piece is one of those beautiful, difficult experiments that give the Chicago performance-art scene its distinctive energy. Loyal audiences of other artists and interested friends, a variety of spaces in which to develop work, and a seemingly endless supply of performers from local schools all contribute to an environment that supports innovation for those willing to take the step.
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After two years of development with a team of artists that included Gina Buccola, Liz Cruger, Becky Pavlatos Gascon, Karen Sorenson, and Jenny Magnus, who provided an able outside eye, Sofianos came up with The Lament of the Onion Cutter, connecting the rigors of grief with the potentially torturous act of chopping onions, using that smell, sound, and sting as the core experience of a ritual honoring her younger brother Michael, who died in 1994. Sofianos sees his death as the catalyst for her life as an artist, but the ceremony is more than a mourning tribute to her muse. Using Sumerian and Greek archetypes of grieving and transformation, she and her collaborators structured an experience that took me and other audience members almost against our will into the uncomfortable, fearful experience of grief. Having thought through the onion metaphor, the group performs the work with a conviction that makes the act of chopping an onion more than a cliche about the layers of grief. Instead Sofianos leads us into a state of physical and emotional overstimulation, a state that remained with me in the form of burning eyes long after the performance was over.
The sensuality of the performance was striking. Our tickets were onions, which we carried with us throughout the long wait for the performance to start, finally tossing them like silky baseballs into overflowing baskets. The wait began to feel like a preparation, and the time to socialize and settle in contributed to my feeling that we were a kind of congregation. The set was simple, but it transformed the Charybdis loft into striking hard and soft lines. Draped platforms and curtains were placed at regular intervals across the stage, and a worn wooden pew sat a little to one side. There were cutting boards and knives on every surface, and the loft’s blue walls were blurred by milky plastic curtains. It seemed a transitional place, suggesting altars and tombstones.
Now dressed in a red gown and crimson velvet gloves and singing a sad, operatic song against the warm counterpoint of a cello, Sofianos was a richly textured figure, moving slowly toward the door–signaling relief for the blinking, squinting audience. Other performers’ voices soon began to double her words, muttering and speaking phrases as if she were being followed by ghosts. As she passed the remains of the onions, my brain kept cataloging the satisfying clutter of vegetables–the bloody pile of purple onions on one platform, the spill of salt and onion chunks at the feet of the priests following behind her, their eyes covered by translucent golden cloth. Every motion and gesture led to the door–and escape from the mocking fumes of the onions.
