12/05/2024
Medicine of Laughter for the Madness We're in the Middle of
THE THEATER OF BIG FUN by Alphonse Allais
reprinted from TYPO 7
Faithful to my agreement, I have not breathed a word about this
booking until everything had been concluded, signed, initialed,
and registered.
Today, I can speak; and my satisfaction is by no means trifling
at being the first to report the sensational news.
It concerns, you guessed it, a new attraction for the 1900
Exposition…
After a thousand initiatives, a thousand refusals, Mr. Bigfun,
the famous Australian impresario, has finally obtained the authorization to open and to… exploit his theater, that theater whose
first performances in the antipodes aroused such indignation,
such anger.
Contrary to that insurance company called “Mutual Life,” the
theater of Mr. Bigfun could be entitled “Mutual Death.”
Like other theaters, it presents human dramas and superhuman melodramas. But—one detail that adds spice to the show—
the victims are real victims, and there’s not a single performance,
for Mr. Bigfun, without at least one real murder or authentic
su***de.
The strangest thing, in this strange business, is that ever since
his theater opened Mr. Bigfun has never suffered a shortage of
willing victims.
At first there were poor devils who, in order to leave a little
money to their indigent families, didn’t hesitate to sacrifice their
lives.
Then came the desperate of both sexes, unhappy lovers and
abandoned young women, who were tempted by the histrionics
and staging of death.
Finally, snobbism became involved, and many people, for
no apparent reason, offered themselves as victims, simply to impress the gallery.
Gamblers then became common as well, and it’s not rare
to see, in the bars of Melbourne and Sydney, excellent drunks
taking bets whose stakes are, quite stupidly, their violent but
decorative deaths on good Mr. Bigfun’s stage.
Despite the enormous expense (some of these macabre protagonists earning a thousand pounds), our impresario made a
considerable fortune.
When the willing victim possesses some talent, and especially
a pretty voice, the price of seats knows no limit.
Thus, when Miss Th. K… agreed to play Juliet in Romeo and
Juliet, a performance that ended with her actual su***de, the
most modest seats sold for dizzying prices. (A folding chair in
the fourth gallery was bought by our amiable colleague in the
French press, M. Brandinbourg, for around twelve thousand
francs.)
It remains to be seen if Mr. Bigfun’s theater will find the
success in Paris that it enjoys down under.
I believe it will, for my part, unless some foolish sentimental
campaign against it is waged by certain newspapers.
—Translated from the French by Doug Skinner
