Smell is all too often easily overlooked, as, for the most part,
we prefer to surround ourselves with no odour whatsoever, or, if we are to
choose an odour to fill our nostrils, it would be one of a pleasant nature, one
you would want to smell over and over: a smell so delicious you want it to
consume your body; every breath you take from that moment on you want to hold
that same, delightful and foreign scent (for it has to be foreign or else we
would get used to it and it would, therefore, cease to be a smell unnatural and
noticed by our noses).
But, as I said before, we prefer to surround ourselves
with no smell at all, or, one could venture to describe it the smell of
neutrality.
For this reason it is one of the senses more easily pushed
aside, ignored or, even, repressed. Think of smell. What is one of the
first things to come to your mind? Decay? If not the first, it should be near the top
of the list. And this is frightfully disagreeable.
Imagine if we associated our
sense of sight with dismemberment, death, horror. Or touch immediately with
pain. Or sound with noise, offensive and hurtful (which would be a horrible
reality as, unlike the other senses, sound is the one we cannot physically
stop).
If this were the case, we probably would repress these other senses as
well. It would come naturally. Easily. The only other sense that is as easily
forgotten as smell is taste. Not because it is mostly offensive, but because it
is only used for a very specific purpose and at a very specific time (unless you
are one of those people who go around licking everything in front of them). No,
taste is usually only called upon when talking of food or drink. It is
utilitarian, only used when absolutely necessary (there is another common use
of taste that doesn’t involve eating or drinking, however it is linked to smell
and usually, again, in a negative light, such as, “I tasted the tallow as soon
as I walked into the room. Dim. I spotted three flames, burning so fierce their
smell dripped onto my tongue”). Yet I will venture to say that taste is not
“forgotten” the way smell is because, as stated above, smell is in use continuously
and because of this our bodies find ways to overcome this continuous assault.
I believe, however, that an unexpected smell can be one of the most
jolting experiences your body can endure. What a great tool to use in the art of theatre-making? No?
In The Rats in the Walls we experimented with smell. Out of our four performances, only once did it work the way we intended. As the play moves on and De la Poer falls prey to the alluring call of man-flesh, we decided to have a crock-pot, slowly cooking a rather pungent pork stock; the idea being that by the end of the show the room would be overwhelmed by the smell of cooking flesh and boiling bones. The smell did not waft from the back room into the playing space for the first show, so we moved it rather secretively to the back of the playing room for the second. People noticed it then (one side of the room did anyway). Our stock wasn't the same for the third and fourth shows, so the smell was nonexistent for them, which is a shame. The idea, however, remains intriguing. Smell. A sense you cannot control. A sense that brings your whole body into the show and takes your mind out of it for a moment. You better believe we'll experiment with it again.
