The fragility of reality: the drama of Will Eno

Julian Meyrick

“For the artists involved, the staging of a theatre play requires what surgeons and philosophers call a suture. A stitching on, in a physical sense, of what it is saying, the world it is conjuring up. Without this personal connection, drama is a just jumble of vocalised third-person sentiments and self-conscious arm waving. Add the human element, via the suture, and the activity is transformed. Plays have a viral status. Neither dead nor alive, it is only when they come into contact with a living host that they achieve real-world solidity. We write books. We paint pictures. We compose music. We ‘do’ plays. And they do us, latching on to whatever passes for our souls like the Xenomorph from Alien, draining them into the desiccated veins of the drama, now walking around bright as a button …”