Review: Domini Public, National Theatre (with the Gate Theatre)

Written for Culture Wars

From the census arises a picture of a nation torn apart. In the square outside the National Theatre, a civil war erupts out of the differences within a group of strangers. Londoners turn against non-Londoners, prisoners are executed by police and, amidst the resultant bodies, one man in the fifty-strong crowd kneels to demonstrate his belief in god or a higher being.

Roger Bernat's Domini Public (trans. The Public Domain) begins gently, using headphones to pose a series of questions to which we are asked to respond physically. Those that live North of the River Thames move to the right; those south of it, head left. The two groups face each other down in an amicable stand-off. Fists are raised signifying knowledge of the national anthem, hands cover the eyes of those that slept with the light on. People that lived at home for more than twenty years position themselves close to someone older.

Gradually, the questions grow into a barrage. All of a sudden, you find yourself divided by salary, head in hand having lied to get out of sex or walking across the square testifying to having mistrusted an Arab. These are public confessions made in a city square, seen (though not understood) by onlookers. Those playing understand – or, at least, believe they understand, for one cannot be sure that everyone is responding to the same questions – the implications of your actions. Sometimes, there’s a twang of shame. Sometimes, there’s comfort in the shared confessionals. Sometimes, those things that you prized lose their value. Almost all of us, for example, believe that we are talented. Most have been on television.

Wisely, the game includes an element of reflexivity, questioning us about how we’re playing. Hands up if you’ve answered all the questions truthfully. Move forward if you’ve gone with the majority when undecided. At one point, we step across the square from left to right according to the cultural activities undertaken last week. Afterwards, once the scale is complete, the voice accuses: “Do you always have to be first?”

But it’s when our responsive physical actions become consumed by and translated into an emerging fiction that Domini Public really takes flight. Relatively early on, we are invited to don a coloured jacket according to our birthplace: London (orange), the rest of the UK (blue) or overseas (yellow). The voice in our ear, uncharacteristically urgent in tone as if narrating a chase, denotes us prisoners, police and Red Cross workers. Suddenly, the square is transformed into a battleground as our stand-off takes on new meaning. Raised fists and hands on hearts become aggressive, tribal and (strangely) earnest. Arbitrary divisions spawn mock executions and – in one genuinely uncomfortable moment – a symbolic rape of a prisoner by a guard. From here the spectacle grows until, finally, the square is littered with corpses and mourners.

It is, perhaps, more impressive from the outside, viewed – as it must be – with an incompete understanding of the driving forces at play. Yet from within it is a touch underwhelming, petering out without offering a truly grandiose climax. It’s almost as if the square is not enough: it should be the whole city. Mischievous and delightful that it is, Domini Public misses the sense of stomach-swelling euphoria that participatory work can achieve.

I have, in the past, complained of feeling dragged through audio-tours and audio-instructed participation. They have a tendency to feel like monorails, whereby we blandly follow orders and tread a well-worn path as dictated by the routemaster or puppeteer artist. Though it can feel deceptively active, the experience is essentially a passive one. Our role is dictated and to take action or choose an alternative is to scupper the whole by refusing to play along.

Domini Public, however, provides a novel alternative. By using questions and answers to orchestrate our movements, it gives up the need to stage-manage precisely. Rather than moving individuals around a game board, it trusts us to move ourselves. Given that our actions denote our individual opinions, histories and personalities, we absolutely own those actions in spite of their being prompted or instructed. We must take responsibility for ourselves: what we have done, who we are and how we play. (There is, of course, no need to answer honestly. Indeed, certain questions are provocative enough that honesty feels a daring action; one easily circumnavigated by a lie.)

Of course, who we are and how we play defines the game and allows divisions to emerge. We are cut and recut, ordered and re-ordered, shuffled like a pack of cards until you realise, perhaps, that each of us has a place and a voice. Add them together and you have a whole, neither united nor divided, but rather assorted. It’s noise – our various voices – is a glorious cacophony.