by Vina Jackson
Posters advertising the night decorated the box office area. They were all black and white and stylistic, a bit like a Rorschach ink stain. What appeared to be the curved contours of a musical instrument from some angles looked like the sweep of a narrow waist or the jutting angle of a hip from others. I picked up a programme and flicked through it.
The Violin Diaries
An erotic, immersive theatre experience.
Leave your friends, and your inhibitions, at the door and let the music take you where it will …
Punters were encouraged to arrive in cocktail outfits or fancy dress, or risk being forcefully changed by venue staff at the door. Each night featured a different theme. Tonight’s was ‘marionettes’, another ‘menagerie’. Masks would be provided, and should be worn at all times.
I put the brochure back down again, somewhat guiltily as I knew that by reading the promotional material I was breaking the rules that Aurelia had set, and stepped out into the main auditorium in search of someone who could tell me where to find the dressing rooms or whatever area had been set aside for that purpose.
A sharp, woody fragrance hit my nostrils, and with it a million memories from my childhood came flooding back. The floor was covered in wood shavings, tightly compacted as if under the weight of a million footsteps so it seemed as though the whole set-up had been sited here forever and not just been erected in the past week. There were no seats. A raised dais – the stage - filled the far end of the room, with a cordoned-off space set out in front for an orchestra. And around that, mirrored pillars reaching from floor to ceiling were stationed at every angle besides any that would impact a view of the main stage. Mirrors covered all of the walls, too. Everywhere I looked, I caught a flash of my own reflection.
I closed my eyes and imagined how it would be when people filled the room, all masked and dressed in costume. Had the showing sold out? I didn’t even know. I hoped so. I could see now how incredible the night would be if Aurelia’s plans worked. She was making the audience a part of the show, encouraging them to lose their inhibitions. There was no allocated seating, so groups would separate and be left to explore, their faces covered and dress different from the norm to allow them to behave however they wished without fear of social reprisal. Dominik would have approved, I knew, of the way his work was now being adapted, betrayed, enhanced. Besides the mirrors, decorations on set and off were totally stark. The focus was not on the room, or the stage, but rather the people who inhabited both. Signs directing patrons to the toilets and bar seemed deliberately absent to encourage exploration. And my music would be the cord that held all of it together. I would be the Pied Piper, reeling them all in.
If I could pull it off.
A pit of nervous energy bubbled in my stomach. I was beginning to feel nauseous.
I heard familiar footsteps behind me and turned as Lauralynn strode through the main entryway, carrying an oversized duffle bag over one shoulder and wheeling a large suitcase behind her. She was wearing a pair of flat leather combat style boots that I hadn’t seen her in before. They looked old and scuffed, but knowing Lauralynn, I guessed they were designer, brand new and artfully dishevelled rather than ancient. Her denim jeans rode low on her hips and her cotton T-shirt was uncharacteristically loose, but cut short so that it didn’t quite cover her midriff. Despite the fact that I had never known her to do any exercise at all, besides whatever she did in the bedroom, her stomach was still as flat as a board. For once, she was wearing a bra.
‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘I seem to have been assigned as your Wardrobe Assistant. May as well get started. You’re not supposed to be in here anyway.’
I volunteered to carry the duffle bag, and nearly dropped it straight onto the floor as she slipped it off her shoulder and onto mine.
‘Christ, what did you bring in here? Bricks?’
‘Make-up,’ Lauralynn replied. ‘For you.’
In fact, it turned out to be body paint, in an array of colours designed to suit every skin tone on the planet. Four artists armed with a whole briefcase each of different sized brushes and a palette of pale cream tones to match each variation in shade over my entire body painstakingly covered me from head to toe.
‘Wait,’ Lauralynn cried, as I was about walk over to the full-length mirror that stood at the other end of our make-shift dressing room, a large closed-off area behind the stage. ‘Close your eyes.’
I did as she instructed, and she guided me to the mirror, and then placed my violin into my hands. Instinctively I lifted the instrument into position beneath my chin and readied my bow.
‘Now open,’ she said.
The effect of the make-up was incredible. I had been painted from the base of my neck down to resemble the Bailly, in warm burnished tones of bronze, tan and rich gold. Every striation, every mark that appeared on the instrument’s body appeared also on mine, cementing the sensual overtones of the instrument’s relationship with the woman who played her. In fact, it was difficult to tell where I stopped and the Bailly began, or who was playing whom. The V shape that ran between my breasts, and my throat and face remained pale. The rouge on my cheeks and lips was so artfully positioned it seemed natural, but made my cheekbones and lips glow, full and luscious. My hair flowed over my shoulders in a mass of perfectly messy curls, the sort of unkempt look that appeared unfussy but actually took hours to arrange. My eye make-up was plain, dark, and cat-like.
Lauralynn had also been painted but rather than resembling her cello, she looked like a human wooden puppet. Her tan skin was now the colour of oak, complete with grain. She had a shine to her, as though she had been lacquered. Her hair was pulled up into a tight bun on her head and her rouge and eye-powder was somewhat animated, as though she was a cartoon version of herself. She was entirely naked and every inch of her had been covered in paint, with the exception of the large bush that she was sporting.
‘Wow,’ I said, looking down. ‘You stopped waxing?’ Lauralynn had been hairless all over for as long as I’d known her.
‘Nope,’ she grinned. ‘It’s a merkin. Makes the whole look rather more pornographic, don’t you think?’
She was right, it did.
The small orchestra that Aurelia and Viggo had recruited to counterpoint my solo violin pieces on the opening night were made-up in a similar way, and all equally nude. Most of the men were totally flaccid, and I could not help but watch the way that their balls hung and guess how hard their cocks might grow when aroused. One, a flautist, looked no older than twenty and was obviously half-erect. If he was embarrassed about his public display of arousal, I couldn’t tell, as his face paint covered any signs of blush. Each of the musicians had evidently been chosen for their skill with an instrument rather than the firmness of their nude flesh, as there were as many plump and round limbs on display as there were long and lean, and not all of the bare breasts that caught my gaze were youthful. There was a beauty in it though, something simple and natural about all of the bodies on display, seemingly both covered and uncovered. The perfection of the paint gave even the most ageing flesh a peculiar allure.
A bell rang to signal five minutes to start and the room around us filled. I could not see the audience behind the curtain that surrounded the dais, but I could sense somehow – from the pitch of echoed whispers, breaths, footsteps landing light and fast – there was a different sort of energy to the crowd here than most of the shows that I had played. Classical music tends to draw a particular kind of punter, and these weren’t it. Standing raised the feeling of expectation, as if the crowd was waiting for something to happen and longing to be involved, to move with the music, to sway and jump and knock into each other. More like a rock concert than a classical gig or a play.
Another bell chimed and the curtain disappeared, its red velvet folds pulled upwards, folding mechanically into the network of beams and pulleys that spiderwebbed unseen across the tent’s ceiling.
>
The crowd gasped in unison as they caught sight of the naked bodies stationed at the front of the stage, reflected in carefully positioned mirrors so that the small orchestra looked twice as large, and so that every possible angle of their nudity was displayed.
I began to play.
A theme from Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’.
Under the influence of the enforced dress code, or was it the constant presence in the audience every single night of Aurelia, Andrei and other now-familiar faces of additional dancers and mute standers-by from the Network, enigmatically stationed around the improvised theatre like a silent Greek chorus from evening to evening, the mood became stranger, more weighted.
Viggo had been engaged, at no doubt a high cost, to record my musical performance on the opening two evenings and I was no longer obligated to play throughout, which both liberated me and gave me leisure to immerse myself deep into the play, the action. Lauralynn had, as agreed taken over some of the sections, adding her own sensual veneer to the melodic tapestry and counterpointed my violin tones with the more masculine echoes of her cello. Viggo’s mix of my music enhanced its inherent melancholy and the sometimes unbridled flights of passion and fantasy that took over when I improvised and severed my ties to the reality of the stage. Here and there, he had added electronic beaches of sounds which fitted like a glove, as if he had been reading my mind. Gradually the play was taking on a new dimension, different every night as Antony made profuse notes which he passed on to Alissa and the few other actors (most of whom now played up to two or three of the minor characters) to inflect the angle of their performance. Words began to disappear from the original text as he eliminated dialogue and soon whole sections of the play, and it became ever more visual and musical, no longer as reliant on the power of mere words. I observed these changes with a conflicted mind, admiring the artistry in progress but also nostalgic for the elements in place that inevitably reminded me of Dominik.
No nightly performance was alike as the show constantly evolved, almost as if in reaction to the reactions of the successive audiences.
But the crowds loved it.
The tickets for the remaining shows were like gold dust.
Antony pleaded for the run to be extended, but the actual Spiegeltent was already booked for a circus somewhere in Eastern Europe and would be packed up after our final night. and transported there. He remained hopeful that the splash we had made would attract some West End theatres to offer us a new home and we could transfer there.
The final evening of our ever-evolving show arrived.
The week had gone by like a fever dream.
From opening night to now, the play had metamorphosed radically, turning from theatre to spectacle, from text to emotions, from a blank canvas to some form of unexploded bomb. As soon as we left the stage every night, we were already raring to go again, primed to take things one step further up the scales, eager to see how far we could stretch our limits until something snapped. It was creative madness and quietly encouraged by Aurelia at our debriefs, although she and her friends were always careful not to be specific, just complicit.
Ratcheting up the tension was the fact that, deliberately or not, any sexual interaction between Antony, Alissa and me had been stifled by our exhaustion following each performance and cars had been arranged to drive us straight to our respective homes, and we would not meet up until late the following morning to plan the daily evolution of the project and then it would be time to go onstage again.
I arrived late, my car having been delayed by traffic crossing the river and I had to rush to the curtained-off area behind the stage where we changed and gathered, hoping that tonight’s wardrobe would be simple, quick to slip into and not require any elaborate make-up. Aurelia stood there, waiting.
She handed me a gown. I had become accustomed to the unusual, daily costume changes, so different from the formal black dresses that I always wore, and I was surprised to be assigned a dress for the final night, although as Aurelia held it up I realised that it was no ordinary frock. The fabric was some kind of manufactured satin stretch, but incredibly fine and covered in tiny jewels in shades of black, green and deep blue that shimmered when they caught the light. Feathers were sewn into the back to form a collar around the shoulders. It resembled the costume of something part bird, part fish, and when I pulled the fabric against my flesh I realised that it was so thin it was partly transparent, just a thin layer of decoration beneath which my naked flesh would be visible in the right light.
‘I’d like you to wear this,’ she said.
Alissa wore something similar, albeit tailored to the lusciousness of her curves. Hers was an olive green tone that suited her skin, and the pattern was decidedly more snake-like. She sat facing a mirror, adjusting her make-up. Antony was in the opposite corner, tightening his belt. He also wasn’t dressed in his customary side-stage outfit of jeans and tee. His trousers were a loose fitting leather or hide, with a jacket that covered just his shoulders and flanks and left his torso bare. It was a soft, thin leather so the effect was Pan rather than biker, and as he stood under the bright lights that had been set up in the changing room I was able to admire the smooth hardness of his chest. It was a costume that I had noticed earlier that week, set aside for the main male performer.
‘Peter, our male lead, can’t make it tonight,’ Aurelia said. ‘Antony will sit in for him. He knows the play inside out, and anyway the focus will be on you and lovely Alissa, won’t it?’
I raised an eyebrow. I doubted any unexpected changes occurred within Aurelia’s tightly run ship. And Antony’s costume fitted him surprisingly well for something that had been apparently intended for another man to wear. My guess was that she had intended him to play the main male part tonight all along. He had, I knew, previously worked as an actor as well as a writer and knew every word of the script, so appeared unsurprised by the request.
Lauralynn barged in. She wore a shimmering pale gold mesh bodysuit that clung like lycra to her form. Her hair was drawn back and fell against her shoulders like waves of wheat.
I was helped into the dress.
There was curious buzz in the air, a sense of both dread and expectation. A feeling that gnawed at my stomach in unsettling ways.
Lauralynn leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
‘Big night, eh?’
I nodded.
She handed me the Bailly and took my hand. Her instrument was already on stage, next to her seat. There was a countdown from one of the technicians and darkness fell. We walked onstage, took our positions, and then waited for the curtain to rise. Lauralynn and I were responsible for the musical overture of the show, setting its mood. Tonight, we had planned an improvisation on a piece by Kreisler.
I tiptoed to my position on the right hand of the proscenium. Lauralynn sat on the left, directly facing me.
The penumbra around the Spiegeltent’s interior began to lighten and my eyes alighted on the audience. Unlike previous nights, tonight’s spectators were unmasked.
And each and every one of them was entirely nude, and painted like an animal.
The cats caught my attention first. Both men and women, limbs long and lithe and painted the sleek blue black of panthers or variations of gold, bronze and brown of jaguar, lions and tigers. Some had ornate collars fastened around their necks. One young man had the appearance of a leopard crouched on all fours and was straining against a short black leather leash attached to a thick silver hoop that surrounded his throat. A tall woman covered from head to toe in tones of black and grey held the end of the lead in one hand, her fingers decorated with thick, ornate rings and her bicep bulging with the force required to restrain him, belying the passive expression on her face. Feathered bands were affixed to her wrists and the tops of her arms, ankles and legs. She was an owl, I guessed.
Others were in cages dotted around the room. They behaved as if th
ey were truly dangerous, prowling back and forth, snapping at the gaps in the bars that penned them in and occasionally letting out muffled yelps and roars.
So these, I guessed, were the Network’s special guests. For one night only. By invitation only.
It felt like being in a B-movie, part terror and part sex exploitation. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or worry. Or repress the excitement racing through my mind.
I breathed hard as I instinctively brought my violin to my chin, raised my bow and observed Lauralynn lower her arm and her own bow towards the cello’s strings.
We began playing.
Following our first cadenza, a dancer was scheduled to pirouette across the front of the stage. Her name was Elena and, although she had been one of Aurelia’s additions to the show, she had a classical ballet background. She was delicate and dark-haired, and had a pixie-like presence.
As Lauralynn and I struck our notes in unison, Elena sauntered onto the proscenium.
She was totally naked, and in the sea of colour that surrounded us, her bare, unpainted skin seemed even more overtly nude and pornographic than it might have done under other circumstances. Her body was beautiful, and watching her almost caused me to drop my bow to my side, stop playing and just stare.
Her nipples were small and hard and perched in the centre of her firm round breasts like ripe cherries, surrounded by barely a millimetre or two of pale pink areola. As she rose onto her toes and prepared to turn, the muscles in her calves, thighs and arse lifted and the small of her back tilted forward, her core remaining as solid as rock. She lifted her arms over her head with the grace and ease of a flower opening its petals and spun, slowly at first and then increasing her pace with the tempo of the music until she was spinning like a whirligig. Without slowing she lifted one leg so that her calf was level with her ear and continued to turn, flashing her open cunt with each rotation, so swiftly that it was impossible to make out anything besides the barest flash of dark pink flesh.