London and the Grotesque

Abstract

24 World literature today a cyclist in yellow spandex, splattered with fake blood, wriggles past. He is followed by a nurse holding onto a Marie antoinette wig and oxygen mask. i leave the dance floor of torture Garden’s Halloween ball and manage to get lost in the winding stairways of the converted basement of St. Matthew’s church: tonight’s venue to the world’s largest fetish club night. i am here because theater director Meyerhold believed that great theater should blend the audience and the actors together, in an attempt to present “the fireworks of life’s contrast, conflicts, and dissonances.” i wanted to write about the grotesque and was looking for a living example: a space of blurred boundaries between participants and observers, a real, living carnival. i find the toilets but cannot tell which are the ladies. i go for the one with the smallest queue and brush past the biggest breasts i have ever seen, let alone on a man. He tops up his fake blood tears. upstairs is the dance floor, where a vampire animatedly explains his choice of leather for his new corset. a band sings in front London and the Grotesque