Category: Theatre & Art

SURTITLED THEATRICALITY. WHAT LANGUAGE DO ARTISTS EXPORT?

SURTITLED THEATRICALITY. WHAT LANGUAGE DO ARTISTS EXPORT?

If certain theatre artists decide to leave their country and start a career elsewhere, reshaping their style to the peculiarities of a foreign audience, others export their work as samples of the kind of theatre that these artists have learned to extract. So what is the essence of their artistic choices? And to what degree does it depend on the addressees’ environment?

© István Biró
© István Biró

Traveling Europe to see theatre—as the Young European Journalists on Performing Arts are doing in the context of the UTE “Conflict Zones” programme—always comes down to the question of “exportability”, especially regarding those performances presented in so-called “international events”.
It goes without saying that dance and music have the extraordinary ability to be really universal, because they are not based on fixed codes of language: the absence of the spoken word—or the challenge presented to its supremacy—brings the semiotics of performance to a more physical, empathic and immediate level.

The question is: how and why does an artist choose to export one show or another? Is he/she aware of the level of engagement that is needed in order for it to be fully received by a foreign audience?

Sample #1. On the 1st of December, the Main Hall opened the curtain for the Ukrainian stage director Andriy Zholdak’s staging of Electra, produced by the National Theatre of Macedonia, a very dark adaptation of the Greek classic “based on Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides”. In the first act, a giant container, with windows and sliding doors, frames four different spaces: a studio/bedroom, a corridor, a bathroom, a kitchen. On the top of the structure, two lateral screens project live feed video of the actors’ close-ups and details of the scene. Thus, the spectators are invited to switch their attention from one side to the other, chasing a very complex montage of actions and emotions. Separated from the narrative—and yet crucial for the understanding—hanged to the ceiling there are two more screens that play the surtitles: English, Romanian and Hungarian on the centre, Macedonian on the side. Then the audience’s attention must be split in at least one more way, depending on the mother tongue of the spectator, who at the same time is listening to a text spoken in a foreign language. Fortunately, the general taste of the performance doesn’t lean much on words, but rather on impressive images and deeply emotional acting style, not without a generous touch of Grand-Guignol in the killing scenes.

Sample #2. The next day, the same venue hosted Andrei Șerban’s staging of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan for the Bulandra Theatre, Romania. The actors, with faces painted in white, mingle up text and songs on a simple but colourful set, trying to recreate a “genuine” Brechtian imagery. In this case, the fact that the plot is quiet familiar to anybody interested in modern and contemporary theatre was of great help, since once again it wasn’t always easy to follow the surtitles (in Hungarian and English).

Sample #3. December the 2nd was also the night of the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory from Sofia, Bulgaria. OOOO – The Dream of Gogol is a very well crafted journey into Nikolai Gogol’s imagery, with excerpts from different short stories, carried out by a tight-knit group of performers. The mood is always halfway between humourous, ironic, dark and desperate; with only a platform and a backwall as a set, some hatches, well designed lights, simple props and an impressive acting talent fully entertaining the audience. The rhythm of the spoken word—frequently delivered by at least three performers simultaneously—is the key to organize such a rigorous physical theatre on stage. Once again, flooded by such a copious river of words in Bulgarian, the attention goes through some hard times in trying to follow the written text, which is streaming on the screen in very dense and quick bicoloured slides.

Sample # 4. December 3rd, back in the Main Hall. The festival hosts the great talent and South-Korean storyteller Jaram Lee (here directed by Ji Hye Park). Her pansori (this is the name of the traditional form of musical storytelling performed by a vocalist and a drummer) The Stranger’s Song needs nothing more than some space to move, a fan and two musicians (playing buk and guitar). In this adaptation of Gabiel Garcia Marquez’s novella Bon Voyage, Mr. President (published in 1993 in The New Yorker), the surtitles are still there, up on the screen doing their translating job into three languages. And yet, the whole performance is so much attached to body language and meticulously built on the relationship between performer and spectator, that one no longer needs to read the text word by word. Thanks to Lee’s clever attitude in putting the audience at ease, and certainly to a simple but powerful story, we manage to follow the path from pantomime to poetry, without worrying too much about the exact sentences.

Since these four samples cannot exhaustively give an account of all the performances the audience of the Interferences Festival was invited to see, what’s the purpose of such a selection?

In the samples we demonstrate how crucial it can be to put great attention to visual dramaturgy in order to stay lively and challenging for the spectator’s eye. Every artist is perhaps aware that the surtitles are the only way to convey the basic meaning of a plot (when there is one); but not all of them are making use of all the numerous other communication elements in an equally successful way.
Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev’s attempt (sample number 3) is outstanding since it shapes a great part of the narrative on the performers’ physical features, on their gestures, their position under lights and a sharp management of proxemics. Appointed to lead the attention, during the choral parts, is not really the meaning of the single sentences (that still are very accurately edited), but rather those inflections, accents, accelerations and slowdowns that colour the speech. Ultimately, a subtle mastery of the space that lights up different corners of the stage with different tones helps the plot to change set and ferries the text from one novella to the other. We are overlooking Gogol’s Russia and Ukraine and reading on a digital screen fragments of a rambling discourse, similar to the one of Diary of a Madman, that, as the last excerpt offered, surprisingly ends up sounding as the most coherent one, only because Mladenova and Dobchev provided us in advance with a handbook to their language.

The difficulties a foreign audience might have found in Șerban’s The Good Person of Szechwan are perhaps rooted in a too static management of the space and the choreographic patterns: the wide stage—two side wings providing all the entries and a crèche-like scale model of the city on the backwall, where the musician plays and sings—is almost empty and crossed by all the characters who walk in and out covering almost the same diagonals. If one lowered down the volume of the words and songs, the visual parade would appear to retrace similar schemes over and over, detaching the attention from the hues of the (very dense) text, and without offering any other handhold to the spectator.

Stepping back to more general considerations, even in an all so familiar Western society such as Europe, trying to cross the language barrier is always a hard mission.
Though here and there exaggerated in summing input to input and yet cleverly evoking disturbing sequences that in some ways catch the glance, sample number 1, Elektra, manages to export an intense theatrical experience because it goes beyond the plain delivery of a text.
Still, the solution found by Jaram Lee remains the most successful. Gently (yet smartly) tickling the fascination for exoticism, The Stranger’s Song accepts a basic compromise to export its language: to knead together a secular national tradition with certain easy communication tricks.
The storytelling itself is not only performed but discussed in front of the audience: Lee frequently steps outside the performance to explain why she uses the fan, why she needs a specific quality of attention and concentration, why she chose that single “very Western” story. If this style needs neither justification nor any special knowledge about Oriental cultures in order to be understood, it is perhaps because its communication elements were accurately prepared before exportation; their selection is already clear in the form and in the attitude of the performer, who cheerfully shares it with the audience.

In other words, a good strategy for an artist to attract and keep the foreign audience’s attention is to put all the elements to the test before exporting a play. As seen during the Young Journalists on Performing Arts think tank—where every topic had a different impact depending on the country—one needs to be extra careful when it comes to talking to a group of foreign colleagues: we don’t want to talk over people; it’s about listening and learning from one another.

 

Published on 22 December 2017 (Article originally written in Italian)

Harbour 40. On the docks of Europe

Harbour 40. On the docks of Europe

In the context of the 11th Short Theatre festival in Rome, four out of five playwrights involved in the UTE project Harbour40 were invited to read extracts from their new texts dealing with harbours and the people associated with them. Here’s a short report about such a multilingual and multicultural event.

Playwriting has never stopped evolving. From country to country, the art of writing for the stage holds a diversified relevance, depending on tradition and, at the same time, on cultural borders continuously pushing and shoving, on the ferment of certain themes, on emerging urgencies in a changing world. Because changing is the word—with its grammar, syntax and semantics—but, first of all, is the imagery; as if from century to century the need for representation had refused too fixed a structure in search of a model always able to reassess the live presence of the spectator, which is to be considered as an ungovernable cell of an organic process.

And that’s how writing acquires temporal and territorial peculiarities, that’s how the “classics” are born, that’s why a text might turn out “old-fashioned” or “out of context” rather than “revolutionary” or “suitable” for a certain time or place or audience. Most of such dynamics change as soon as the paradigm of the “lonely writer” is subverted.

Harbour40 is the title of a project developed through a schedule of meetings and think tanks held in the context of the “Conflict Zones / Zones de Conflits” project by the UTE in Rome and Vienna. Playwrights from Bulgaria (Stefan Ivanov), Greece (Angeliki Darlasi), Italy (Roberto Scarpetti), Palestine (Amir Nizar Zuabi) and Syria (Ibrahim Amir) have been discussing burning global issues, and how those relate to their societies. The brain-storming generated the idea of writing collectively, while on the other hand trying not to drop the fundamental specificities attached to each political and cultural background.
With the technical support of the Teatro di Roma and thanks to a very enthusiastic participation of the staff of the Short Theatre festival—directed by Italian director Fabrizio Arcuri since 2006—the first outcome of Harbour40 was a public reading at La Pelanda, a former slaughterhouse converted into a cultural venue in Rome. The excerpts presented by Angeliki Darlasi, Stefan Ivanov, Roberto Scarpetti and Amir Nizar Zuabi, though read in five different languages, had many things in common, and a shared leading image: the harbour, imagined as a “non-place” where people leave and return; where they meet and exchange goods and words, even lives and destinies. The further steps of the project would aim to collect the four texts and mix them into a comprehensive structure, letting the story fly from Jaffa to Piraeus, from Genoa to the Black Sea, but also through markets in the Syrian desert, Turkey and Tunisia.

On a bare stage, the four authors sit on a black couch under a dimmed light; crossing a delicate fog, each of them takes turn at the microphones placed on the front stage. When one rests the pages on the bookstand and starts reading, it’s like being left alone in another world.
Ivanov murmurs his Bulgarian lines keeping his body perfectly still, the surtitles stream on the screen and tell about a grandson and a grandfather, they talk about the channel that links Sofia and the Black Sea, that cost 22 thousand deaths among the prisoners from the Gulag.
In Darlasi’s fragment, Iliana walks back and forth on a dock of Piraeus, waiting for somebody; Natasha is fishing: the tragedy of the refugee flows is narrated from the point of view of the passengers, while the fate remains uncertain even when the boats touch land, and a life might change in unpredictable and painful ways.
Scarpetti’s monologue is the account of a trip to Genoa, where a Tunisian man is sent by the family to sell the house of a dead uncle who had left Tunisia many years ago: the infernal Italian bureaucracy will swallow him, scaling down any expectation about a fortune to be made in a foreign country to which many compatriots would love to escape.
Nizar Zuabi imagines the interview between different port-authority officers with Miss Queen, who is in search of her disappeared father. Beyond obstructionism and the suspect of an intentional code of silence, the father himself appears as a sort of Shakespearian vision, speaking Arab and whispering some chilling details about his—most likely deadly—trip.

More than any other form of writing, a play lets the characters speak up with their own voices, and the main task of playwriting should indeed be to deal with actual facts, bringing the inner feelings to the surface.
Just before the reading, the festival organized a public meeting held by the journalist Graziano Graziani, in which the four authors sit with Italian and French colleagues (Erika Z. Galli, Martina Ruggeri, Lorenzo Garozzo, Alessandra Di Lernia and Sonia Chiambretto), members of Fabulamundi Playwriting Europe, a networking programme for translating and diffusion of European plays. The discussion focused on the question of language and what kind of audience a playwright might (or should) fancy. Although attempting very different approaches, the quasi totality of the writers does not want to imagine an ideal spectator, in order not to feel too comfortable and rather drag the audience into a realm as uneasy as the contemporary issues they deal with.

When asking questions to the spectators of Harbour40, the strongest feedback was of course on the themes, on how Europe and the Mediterranean mirror the contemporary social-political contradictions. But for such a project it’s also important to take note of some other comments that expressed how fascinating it was to listen to multilingual texts without the mediation of the actors, but rather facing the very presence of the author. Also because of the fact that the audience was largely composed of professionals, a great part of the attention was focused on the body, on how the absence of the mise-en-scène brought the very essence of the words (with their peculiarities in linguistics and spelling) on the top of any form of theatrical interpretation. Thus, Ivanov’s firm and polite immobility could be confronted with a more animated and “acted” performance delivered by Nizar Zuabi, deriving from different professional backgrounds but also from cultural specificities in terms of language and expressiveness.
If, on the one hand, the term “collective” indicates something that is done together, its roots go down to the act of “collecting”, as to say to grasp bits and pieces of identity, displaying them in front of an active and diversified audience, that shapes a myriad of, both personal and universal, meanings.

 

Published on 22 September 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)

THE ISO MASTERCLASS IN SOFIA. AFTER BECKETT, TOWARDS A GENETICS OF TRUTH

ISO MASTERCLASS IN SOFIA.
AFTER BECKETT, TOWARDS A GENETICS OF TRUTH

The stage is dark, silent, empty. An indistinguishable figure (Nadia Keranova) stands still against the background wall tinged with blue. One foot bare and the other wearing an oversize hiking shoe, she walks towards the center, under the amber backlight, then a sound explodes and she falls on the ground of the right corner. She takes a small mirror from her pocket, and, with incredibly slow movements, she slots the mirror in the shoelaces: what a surprise to see her own image…

In the context of the Small Season Festival 2016 at the Sfumato Theatre-Laboratory in Sofia, Bulgaria, Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev directed a four-day masterclass with eight members of the International Super Objective (ISO) Theatre, a group of young European actors from nine different countries developed in the context of the 2012 UTE Decentralized Academy.

In the view of Mladenova and Dobchev, who during the masterclass were helped by a brilliant Bulgarian to English interpreter, Sava Dragunchev, “the idea is through the garment to resurrect the human, his unique personal being and so to form his monologue.” Petya Alabozova, Sophie Lewisch, Aglaia Katsiki, Benjamin-Lew Klon, Luís Puto, Angélique Zaini, Bilyana Georgieva and Boris Krastev joined Ivan Barnev, Hristo Petkov, Boyko Krastanov, Catalin Stareishinska and Nadia Keranova (all from Bulgaria) working each one on an excerpt of the 1972 Samuel Beckett short play Not I.

The author’s indications fix a single spotlight on an actress’s mouth, “about eight feet above the stage,” and a second silent character named Auditor, who performs movements “of helpless compassion”. In the two directors’ idea, the role of Mouth is played by the actors in thirteen five-minute long solo scenes that follow the same structure. A blue light on the back wall, a central spotlight: when the actors reach the centre, a breaking sound smashes them down in the dark. A ringing recovers them and obliges them to speak the text, somehow against their own will. Thus, Mouth is not an actual character, rather an outside presence, “a small girl who is speaking from an outer world”, as it is whispering the lines in the actors’ ears.

The speech is fragmented and mechanical, the pauses and the punctuation almost nonsensical. The pause, the intermission between one thought and the other, in the hiatus there’s the very essence of Beckett’s writing. “You talk but you don’t know how, it’s not a physical process.”, says Dobchev, who is smoking a cigarette sitting in the dark of the first row. “You feel exhausted, as if something mysterious happened to you and crushed you down. And now you are slowly waking up.”

Under the title of Second Hand, the masterclass accompanied the group through an initial session of improvisation work, to be later used to shape the sense (or the nonsense) of the text. In the first two days, the actors were also invited to choose their “second hand” costumes and props, previously used in other productions of the Sfumato.

When mingled with the Irish author’s writing, ragged coats, misshapen trousers, beggar-style hats, broken umbrellas and walking canes look so “Beckettian”, in the way they suggest a post-human imagery. And yet, the route of this work heads towards a “pre-human” condition, a sort of biblical archeology that tries to investigate the original sin from a Sartre-like perspective: everyone was condemned to be born, and living is just a way to endure that heavy duty.

Dobchev talks about the word of God and its “inexplicable miracle, pure, from the very beginning”, about “the need for love”, but also about Prometheus and his attempt to replicate the sacred fire, to give birth to life, to imitate the Gods.
Benjamin walks and dances on high heels, falls on the floor spreading legs in front of the audience: he delivers his lines assuming the position of a woman who’s delivering a baby. “Every word must be a surprise for you,” Dobchev and Mladenova insist. In fact, the vocal cords of the actors are transformed into a mere tool at the mercy of someone (or something?) else’s will.
The actor’s key to such a primordial speech is in keeping totally detached from the idea of impersonating a character, by using body and voice as instruments that let such speech be louder in the spectator’s ears.

Without necessarily being a theatre or literature expert, reading Samuel Beckett means engaging a never-ending conflict, standing in front of a castle made of doubts with no entry doors: “This female voice that you hear in your minds”, says Mladenova, “may be your own attempt to decipher a code and find your own place. It’s the experience of every single man that tries to find his place.”
Imprisoned as they are in their small space centre stage, the actors found a way to be powerful, leaning on a very accurate and original physical work that marks the peculiarities of a rich bunch of styles and training backgrounds.
“We don’t have a memory from our birth because our eyes couldn’t see”, suggest the directors. This idea, mixed with the extraordinary capacity of Beckett’s words to gain a second, a third, and an umpteenth meaning, guarantees a variety of images and attitudes, from rage to sensuality, from childish muttering to clumsy dance, from lyrical tones to beastly growls. In such a jungle of languages, Dobchev and Mladenova invite the actor to flee any psychological research, rather pointing out as many metaphors and external references as possible, provoking new approaches by associating each sentence to a physical experience, like: “You are getting closer to this truth, but this truth is very hot, like a stove; when you reach it, it will burn your fingers.”

Thus, according to Dobchev, “speech means truth; when you are speaking, you are trying to make things real, you speak just in order to verbalize. The truth is for salvation, not for consolation, because Beckett is not a moralist, he pities the humanity. With this sort of speaking corpse we want to reach the truth, this is the adventure. To reach ‘the country from which no visitor returns’, as Hamlet says.”
By watching them work, loneliness is the most evident feeling. Nevertheless, Not I also poses a second character next to Mouth: the Auditor. In the view of the two Bulgarian directors, the Auditor must be seen as a symbol for the spectators. Barefoot under a long black mantle, Boris Krastev marks a constant silent presence on stage, listening and provoking the speech at the same time. Judging with his blind look (he wears eyeglasses with red lenses), the Auditor is the personification of the audience, he “stands for the multiplied listener.”
A listener to which question? The main question of Beckett, but also of any other form of theatre: who are we? Under the pressure of the lights, the ringing, the short time and the Auditor, the token performer seems to try out a personal way to address that very question, confronting a sense of panic, or the threat of an unknown punishment, or an inner sorrow, in a paradoxical situation in which not pain nor happiness can be felt because they were deprived of their meaning in the very first place. It’s not a journey to the knowledge of a character, but to the opportunity for the actor to arrange an individual position toward the voice that hits the senses of a mysterious character (Mouth), who inhabits a slightly distant dimension.

It’s hard to find an answer when the questions don’t come out. “Let yourselves be explorers”, the directors suggest, “be scientists. Let yourselves cast a glance into a microscope and accept to see a mysterious creature as it dies.” In such a detachment lies the basic nature of acting; to experiment the feeling of being someone else, of living someone else’s life. “It’s about getting closer and closer to a scream that is not going to come out. Because you need to be alive in order to scream. And you’re not.”
Thus, the only possible way to make any sense, is by getting deeper and deeper into the very essence of each word, to unveil the most intimate layer, the one that resonates in everybody’s most inner and common impulse. It’s a quest for humanity, that basic plateau on which every soul slips, on the journey to knowledge.

 

Published on 3 July 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)

ISO Theatre – Porto 2016: Krausian Satire as well as a Cabaret Slapstick

ISO Theatre – Porto 2016:
Krausian Satire as well as a Cabaret Slapstick

Between 22 and 31 May, 2016, one of the ISO Theatre (International Super Objective Theatre – the group name is an allusion to Stanislavsky’s notion of super-objective) meetings took place, this time in collaboration with the Portuguese National Theatre São João in Porto (Teatro Nacional São João do Porto).

© Susana Neves / TNSJ
ISO Theatre residency in Porto © Susana Neves / TNSJ

The ISO Theatre Group was established in 2012 under the auspices of the UTE (Union of European Theatres/Union des Théâtres de l’Europe) as a spontaneous response to the masterclasses, organized by the UTE Decentralized Academy. One of the first masterclasses was held in November 2012 in the Little Drama Theater in St. Petersburg (Малый драматический театр / the Maly Drama Theatre) under the guidance of Russian director Lev Dodin.

The idea of both interconnected projects – the ISO Theatre and the UTE Decentralized Academy – is based on the principle of creative exchange and sharing of experiences in the context of the tradition of European theater aesthetics and anthropologically oriented theatre discourse of contemporary Europe. The collaboration of both platforms is carried out within the network-programme of the UTE called Conflict Zones, which is supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union).

The 2012 emergence of the ISO Theatre was articulated in A European Youth The ISO Manifesto, in which the artists formulated their pan-European ideological and artistic vision. At the birth of the ISO Theatre stood several young theatre practitioners from six European countries and Israel. Over the past four years, the group has undergone slight changes, and the solid core of the company was formed. Currently, the group consists of eight member countries (Bulgaria, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Greece and Israel/Palestine).

In Porto, the ISO Theatre group worked under the leadership of Nuno Carinhas, the artistic director of the National Theatre São João, Porto, and the Lisbon-based director Nuno M. Cardoso. The basis of the week-long workshop was the dramatic opus magnum written by the Austrian satirist, essayist, journalist, performer and, above all, visionary Karl Kraus (April 28, 1874, Jičín, now Czech Republic – June 12, 1936, Vienna): The Last Days of Mankind (first published as a series in K. Kraus’s journal Die Fackel – The Torch between 1918–1919)

Kraus’s Destruction of the World in the Black Magic of Wikisources and Postmodern Totality of Global Phrases

Karl Kraus wrote his Last Days of Mankind, a dramatic oeuvre in five acts with prologue and epilogue, between 1915–1918/19, i.e. in a close connection with the war events, which Kraus reflected in the work with his symptomatic, docudramatic satire.

Documentary character of this text lies in two aspects: (1) the text material is imbued with concrete, “annexed” reality of wartime events; (2) Kraus’s then heretically original artistic practice based on the dramatic montage of anonymous quotes from newspapers, war reports, proclamations of political and army officials or individuals representing cultural and artistic elites, as well as the speech patterns and phrases appropriated from the everyday, mostly Viennese, street life. The linguistic material, which drew on a wide array of contemporary public life and especially from its media discourse, provided Kraus a pre-text which he quite loosely assembled into a distinctive collage. However, the quoted anonymous excerpts remained literally faithful to the original. Needless to say that the statements of an endless line of characters, i.e. “mankind,” are either verbatim or loose quotes expropriated from the speeches of concrete individuals who are subjected to Kraus’s satirical subversions.

Noteworthy is also the structure of Last Days of Mankind, which converges the aesthetic convention of traditional dramatic form (five acts with prologue and epilogue) with the characteristic modernist practices (montage or juxtaposition of separated elements). In this context, Kraus with his original creative approaches (in the Last Days of Mankind e.g. a method of documentary citation) can be considered a direct predecessor of theatre of absurd or postmodern, documentary and post-dramatic theater.

Symptomatic of all of Kraus’s work, including the Last Days of Mankind, is its affinity with the philosophy of language, namely Ludwig Wittgenstein (see e.g. JUST, Vladimír. Valpružiny noci Karla Krause. Divadelní revue 25, 2014, č. 2, s. 104–130). One of the dominant features of the Last Days of Mankind is Kraus’s essential belief that the acts of concrete violence, the structure of power mechanisms and principles of totalitarian manipulation grow from automatisms of linguistic clichés or the anonymous “tyranny of public phrases” (ČAPEK, Karel. Spisy. Od člověka k člověku III. Praha: Čs. Spisovatel. 1991, s. 173). In the context of philosophy of language, Kraus’s documentary-citation method, which is the cornerstone of the Last Days of Mankind, seems to be a logical outcome of the artist’s ethical and philosophical convictions. Characteristic of Kraus is his particularly sharp criticism of not only public populism, superficial journalism, nationalism in all its forms, but, above all, media strategies per se.

In one of his texts, entitled The End of the World Through Black Magic (1922), Kraus did not hesitate to call journalists “modern-day vampires who feed on ink instead of blood ” (qtd. in JUST, V. Ibid., p. 112) [The title of this subchapter is an allusion to Kraus’s text]: “Newspapers exterminate all imagination: explicitly in the way they offer reality with fantasy, while protecting the receiver from his activity; indirectly by anaesthetizing his ability to perceive art […] The poet will no longer exist, substituted by the reporter; and the state lacks the imagination to introduce the very last tax which would be a kind of starting point and a kind of honest attempt at pounding the capital out of spiritual misery: phrase tax.” (Kraus, K. Soudím živé i mrtvé. Praha: Odeon, 1974, s. 219–220) In this sense, Karl Kraus anticipated the subsequent development of critical thought about the media discourse. It is hard to say how would Kraus reflect the current mediatized world, dominated by global, television, and internet strategies.

In the Last Days of Mankind, Karl Kraus expressed his anxiety about political events and their mediatized image which is in our tradition “inscribed” in history: “In this time you should not expect a single word from me. Besides: The only protection from the misinterpretation is silence. […] Those who have nothing to say, keep talking. Let him who has something to say come forward and be silent.” (KRAUS, Karl. Aforismy. Přel. Aloys Skoumal. Divadlo 15, prosinec 1964[a], č. 10, s. 28.).

Kraus’s words resonate with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s letter to Ludwig Ficker: “My work consists of two parts, the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important point. […] In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it.” (Wittgenstein qtd. in Janik, see link)

The afore-mentioned quotes capture the intellectual and aesthetic essence of Kraus’s Last Days of Mankind more eloquently than any detailed description of this vast, almost 800 pages long work that stages an apocalyptic and deliberately de-individualized vision of destruction and decay of European civilization against the backdrop of the First World War.

Besides his literary-satirical, essayistic and journalistic activities, Kraus organized his own public lectures within which he also performed (Kraus was also an actor and cabaret artist in his early youth). The format of lectures was rather syncretic, fusing authorial readings with stand-up and performance art. However, the topicality of Kraus’s theatrical and dramatic legacy, which inspired e.g. Austrian actor Helmut Qualtinger, in the context of contemporary European dramaturgy remains virtually undervalued. It is only in the German-speaking countries where, every now and then, an adaptation of the Last Days of Mankind occurs.

In this context, Robert Wilson’s controversial Prague production of 1914 should be mentioned. The script of 1914, which premiered in April 2014 at the Prague National Theatre under the auspices of the CONFLICT ZONES network-programme of the UTE, is based on Marta Ljubková and Robert Wilson’s adaptation of Kraus’s Last Days of Mankind and the satirical novel The Good Soldier Švejk (1921–1923) written by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek. 1914 was the second attempt at the stage adaptation of Kraus’s play in the Czech Republic.

1914: Kraus, Karl – Hašek, Jaroslav – Ljubková, Marta – Wilson, Robert. Director and set designer Robert Wilson, prem. April 30, 2014, Estates Theatre of the National Theatre © Lucie Jansch
1914: Kraus, Karl – Hašek, Jaroslav – Ljubková, Marta – Wilson, Robert. Director and set designer Robert Wilson, prem. April 30, 2014, Estates Theatre of the National Theatre © Lucie Jansch

Historically the first (and essentially the only) Czech production of Kraus’ work, presented as Last Moments of Mankind, was mounted by the Prague Chamber Theatre at the Theatre Comedy, Prague (prem. 2011).

(Last Moments of Mankind. Kraus, Karl – Schmitt, Katharina – Zielinski, Thomas – Riemenschneider, Alexander – Bárta, Vojtěch – Knotková, Viktorie. Director: Schmitt, Katharina – Zielinski, Thomas – Riemenschneider, Alexander, prem. April 22, 2011, Theatre Comedy.)

ISO Theatre Inquiry into the Fourth Act of Kraus’s Apocalyptic Vision

The artistic residency of the ISO Theatre in Porto united seven members of the group: Bilyana Georgieva (Bulgaria), Khwala Ibraheem (Israel/Palestine; participated in the final stages of the residency), Boris Krastev (Bulgaria), Vincent Menjou-Cortès (France), Luís Puto (Portugal), Kim Willems (Germany) and Angélique Zaini (France). Rehearsals/masterclasses were conducted under the leadership of Nuno Carinhas and Nuno M. Cardoso and took place on the premises of the former Benedictine monastery Mosteiro Sāo Bento da Vitória, whose significant part has been utilized by the National Theatre São João, Porto Teatro Nacional São João do Porto, TSNJ) for alternative and chamber-like events for which this space offers appropriate conditions that can’t be provided by the traditional proscenium arch stage of the historical building of the TSNJ.

For the purposes of the masterclass, directors Carinhas and Nuno M. Cardoso selected the fourth act of Kraus’s Last Days of Mankind. In the first stage of the masterclass (May 23 – May 27) the performers worked on collective improvisations which were based on the fragments from the fourth act. The final outcome of the workshop was presented as a “work-in-progress” in front of an audience, consisting of an internal member circuit of the TSNJ and invited trainees of the CONFLICT ZONES network-programme of the UTE, namely Elena Galanopoulou (cultural journalist, Greece), Julie Kočí (historian of ballet and dance theater, Czech Republic) and Sergio Lo Gatto (theater critic and cultural journalist, Italy).

The final presentation, which was conceived as an informal, open and uninterrupted rehearsal, included nine improvised scenes from the fourth act of the Last Days of Mankind (scene 11, 12, 13, 14, 22, 32, 34, 38 and 39). The actors performed on a bare stage, coated with the vinyl dance floor material, the backstage was separated by a black curtain. In the front left side of the stage there was an ordinary worn-out wooden table and chairs. In several improvisations both pieces of furniture were employed in a variety of ways. Among other items that have appeared on the stage were e. g. camera, pen and paper, paper bag (designed for pastry) or a plastic box filled with a leftover from lunch, or fork. All props, as well as “costumes” were fully authentic objects of everyday use. The ordinary-like authenticity of improvised fragment was disrupted by the articulated aesthetic interpretation only once and for a few moments: at the end of scene 13, which is in Kraus’s play a grotesque demonstration of anonymous brutality, embodied in the violent act of a male nurse assaulting a wounded, groaning soldier; in the spirit of Kraus’s bitter poetics the scene leads into the saucy pub ditty that drowns the moans of the dying soldier. In the presentation, the pub ditty was substituted with Ravel’s Bolero.

The open rehearsal revealed the precise work of both directors who prepared the workshop and presented fragment, powerful presence of some performers and diversity of acting and cultural traditions of ISO Theatre members.

Carinhas and Nuno M. Cardoso approached the ISO Theatre residency, whose contribution already lay in the dramaturgical selection of Kraus’s play, both pragmatically and highly empathically, respecting the linguistically and culturally disparate nature of all participants, as well as the complicated structure of Kraus’s text. Both directors were very well aware of the linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical complexity of Kraus’s vast work, and, hence, were very well aware of the complex difficulties related to the linguistic, as well as meta-linguistic translation of the text within the framework of a 4–5-day workshop.

Thus, the major objective of their concept of the ISO Theatre residency was not unifying an aesthetic idea of Last Days of Mankind or an abstract interpretation of the work, but the principle of a collective experience of the text which – under the satirical reflections of media discourses related to the recent war history of Europe – conceals a profound anthropological experience of European civilization.

ISO Theatre Dramaturgy: A Search for the European Theme in the Jumble of Judeo-Christian Tradition (Bible) – Anthropological Pretext of Ancient Tragedy (Oresteia) – and in the Chaos of Life-style Clichés or Guidebooks of Contemporary Global Discourse

The group dedicated the last three days of ISO Theatre residency in Porto to the debate on the possible dramaturgical and operative concept of the future project which could be implemented either on the principle of a collective-laboratory creation, or in collaboration with a director. An organic, at times dramatically tectonic, debate predominantly addressed the issue of dramaturgical choices. Unequivocal consensus prevailed regarding the conceptual vision of ISO Theatre dramaturgy, which should focus on pan-European themes presented in a perspective that would resonate with the dynamic nature of controversial notions (or clichés?), such as “Modern Europe” – “contemporary European” – “contemporary European society” and its culture…

The outlined dramaturgical-conceptual collective process crystalized in the discussion of three fundamental materials that reflect the shared cultural-anthropological legacy of the European tradition, as well as the complexity, brutality and volcanic controversy of historical continuity of European civilization. The group discussed the Bible and the Aeschylus’s Oresteia; another topic was the global media format of guidebooks, cookbooks or instruction manuals, approached with a sense of biting irony and grotesqueness.

The satirical inversion of current not only European but global media discourse that corresponds to the Last Days of Mankind seems to be an eloquent reminiscence of Kraus’s message for the contemporary globalized European civilization, under whose ruins the embers of myths of collective origin still smoulder and the stigmata of both ancient and recent conflicts keep bleeding.

At a time when spectres once again are haunting Europe, spectres which cast far-reaching shadows of past guilt – a warning memento for the future – we, Europeans, probably have no other alternative but to choose between a postmodern-discursive analysis of our cultural memory embedded in the post-dramatic, fragmentary forms, or remain silent in the Krausian–Wittgensteinian manner.

“Under the white walls a mud in pearl-sheen
and after the wind bells flew to Rome,
horizon blushes, my dad,
scarlet in shame
we’re here alone, no descent from the cross.

Languid battalions already burning hands of bearers,
perhaps under the helmet only eyes hope

[…]

Not a piece of cake to drink again a heaping glass of wine
And believe in prophets in the chorale of bungle,
Dark hundred years shine with the star of poison
On the coat of arms for slaves – our heirs.”

(Karel Kryl, a fragment from the song White Mountain/Last Moravian.)

The quoted lyrics of Czech poet and songwriter Karel Kryl (April 12, 1944, Kroměříř – March 3, 1994, Munich) — who in 1969 left communist Czechoslovakia for West Germany, where, among others, he co-operated with the exile Radio Free Europe — express better than any other word the bitterly painful experience of this post-war (East- and Central) European artist who, like a few generations before him the (Central-) European Kraus, did not and could not remain silent. Kryl’s song is an allegorical protest against the occupation of Czechoslovakia that followed the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. The lyrics, however, strictly correspond with the historical facts related to the Battle of White Mountain, an early battle in the Thirty Years’ War fought on 8 November 1620, in which an army of 15,000 Bohemian estates and mercenaries were defeated by 27,000 men of the combined armies of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, and the German Catholic League. The battle marked the end of the Bohemian period of the Thirty Years’ War, and decisively influenced the fate of the Czech lands for the next 300 years.

Kryl’s reference to the monstrous reality of the Thirty Years War and his immediate allegory of his own experience with the demonstration of Soviet totalitarian power, as well as of his own awakening to the reality of active collaboration of Czechoslovak political representation, which was accompanied with the passivity of a majority of Czechoslovak population, is a telling postscript to Kraus’s artistic reflection of European totalitarianisms through the poetics of phrases, shibboleths, and media clichés.

 

Published on 29 June 2016 (Article originally written in Czech)

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

a comment on the ISO residency in Porto

ISO residency in Porto
© Susana Neves / TNSJ

Up and down, up and down, up and down. That’s how the streets of Porto take you around, from a small café full of students lost in their books to the sound of crackling vinyls, to the stream of tourists going down to the riverside. Strong wind, some rays of sun, a lot of rain. This is the weather that welcomes a one-week ISO residency at the National Theatre São João, a time warp dedicated to creation and brainstorming.

The International Super Objective Theatre (ISO) is a project developed in the context of the 2012 UTE Decentralized Academy. Initiated in the course of a masterclass directed by Russian stage director Lev Dodin in Saint Petersburg, the ISO is a collective of young theatre artists from all over Europe and beyond, with the aim to explore what being European means today through theatre practices.

The kind of work that Nuno Carinhas and Nuno M. Cardoso conducted with the group of actors resembled the one made in a science lab, playing with elements and doses, provoking reactions between the performers and the spectators. The choice to use the original text of Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind and mix it with its English, French and Bulgarian translations revealed so many contradictions. The contradictions of a continent that would like to act and reason with a collective mind and realizes that it sometimes is not even able to understand its own words.
In one scene, an officer dictates a letter to a secretary, who—not speaking the language—finds no other way to execute the task than to perform a frenzied pantomime that mimics voice tones and their supposed meaning.
The result is an ironically distorted mirror of what is happening nowadays not just with respect to Europe, but whenever we consider the nature of our current modes of communication, overwhelmed by a Babel of contradictory signs and tools that give the illusion of a closer distance.

We might join this group of people for a simple stroll through the park or for a cup of chà in a secret and fancy-furnished tearoom in Porto, and a passionate conversation on religion and faith would seamlessly intertwine with comments on the structures of national theatres, with no need for excuses. There is always something refreshing in getting deeper into an artist’s mind, where every single detail of perception transforms into one element of an organic process.

For the journalists invited to cover the story the open rehearsal—held in front of a small but very attentive audience in the rehearsal room of the Mosteiro São Bento da Vitória—was just the starting point, to dig a way down to an even more complex process.
The group first gathered four years ago; the workforce has been changing, including new nationalities that have joined and introduced new perspectives, pursuing a sort of balance which doesn’t accept to be frozen by any hierarchal system. Angelique, Balázs, Bilyana, Boris, Khwala, Kim, Luís, Petya and Vincent (part of a larger group) got to know each other better and better, and are now aware of their common past and in search of a common future.

Sitting at their table for seven meals, having a drink together, playing childish games in the park a few hours before leaving Porto was such a great learning experience. But what was even more compelling for a journalist was the need to learn a different state of beholding, to find a way to be present without interfering. Being there while the group was spreading and discussing and changing ideas clacking on the notebooks and scribbling on the notepads meant to testify how the creative process is something, again, contradictory by nature: it demands of you to be in control and, at the same time, to be willing to be obstructed and put in crisis. As Italo Calvino stated, “The perfect idea is the one that is open to be discarded to make room for a better one.”

Between doubts about which should be the textual base for a further research and very different views on aesthetics and poetics of the performing arts, the core of the attention was in fact a meeting point: an actor and an actress on stage can (and must) be the keynote speakers for a tough but necessary discourse on contemporary society; because every shared action is a political one. And political acts are at the heart of a collectivity and the key to its consciousness made alive. Here’s the ultimate, fruitful contradiction: the members of a collective win back an individual prominence. And that’s why the International Super Objective Theatre should not forget to stay subjective.

 

Published on 27 June 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)

Searching Theatrical Utopias in Porto

Searching Theatrical Utopias in Porto

ISO residency Porto
© Susana Neves / TNSJ

Utopia. This word was repeatedly on the lips of the members of the ISO collective and on several occasions. The group was created by seventeen actors from eleven European (and other) countries and it was based on the manifesto they signed in St Petersburg, in November 2012. They went on to share the experience of similar encounters from then on and the group united once again thanks to the UTE (Union des Théâtres de l’Europe). The word Utopia comes from the Greek words οὐ (non) and τόπος (place). This time, the place was the majestic Porto in Portugal. The lively group of the young actors had one week, from the 22nd to the 30th May, and a common place to work in, experiment, suggest and try things out. Their guide? This time it was the renowned Portuguese director Nuno Carinhas. Their motive? A special play about the history of Europe. “The Last Days of Mankind”, by Karl Kraus.

Upon the table of the awesome Monasteiro São Bento da Vitória theatre, which was named after its former use and which is one of the venues of the Teatro Nacional São João do Porto, lie several maps of Europe following World War I illustrating the transformations brought about by it. One of the maps is completely plain. “If the maps appear to be different it’s not because the land and the sea have been rearranged on them, but because the borders have been changing. We are still facing many problems with respect to the borders”, points out the director, who regards Kraus’s text as being modern, let alone prophetic. Written for the present. “We are monsters”, he realizes after a while.

However, the reason he chose the specific play was political, rather than practical. The extensive text, playing with the notions of “language” and “ideology”, was written as some kind of drama documentary, embedding references, official documents, proclamations, and articles that were published in the press back then. Some of the numerous scenes are dramatic, others are comic. The directors, Nuno Carinhas and his assistant, Nuno M. Cardoso, selected the most interesting ones with respect to the dynamics of the illustrated relationships.

ISO residency in Porto

“This is your material and this is your space,” said the two and handed over the scene to the actors to have them improvise. “We gave no specific directions. The material is yourselves and the relationship among you”, they had said. They also had the brilliant idea to incorporate different translations of the play. This decision enhanced both the process and the outcome, as witnessed during the open rehearsal. By approaching the text via the different syntax and musicality of the distinct languages, they succeeded in reaching deep into the drama. “I barely know a word in Bulgarian and yet, I didn’t even feel I had to take a look at the text. Everything I needed in order to understand was already on stage for me to take in. Gestures, looks, the dramaturgy behind the dramaturgy, all of it spoke volumes,” says a viewer in the discussion that follows. The aim was not to come up with a performance. The presentation only took place so as to remind us that in order for the theatre to exist an audience is needed.

 

So, the natural obstacle posed by the language in the case of this workshop, turned out to be an interesting privilege. With its members having completely different origins, the team, already being in its third year, has started binding and creating its own internal dynamics. This was the first time they had ever worked on a given play, as they had been improvising so far, using devised methods.

“I think a specific play was what we needed. The whole thing is already utopian. When I was young I thought things would change, that it would be like living in a dream. I think it is good to be concrete and to work in a concrete way”, points out the French actor Vincent Menjou-Cortès.

“What we managed to do in only four days was very interesting. I don’t think there can be theatre without the actors’ personalities. You all have unique qualities and an amazing imagination. Each one of you had his own way to approach the material. Each one had a particular kind of energy. I don’t usually talk too much. Not even to the Portuguese actors. I use my body to explain things. This has been a very intense moment for me; a fantastic moment for you. You are all here, far from your countries and families, and all that you have is a place to work on an idea or on the theatre. It was too hard for me to go back to the office after that. I’m very proud of what ISO can be”, concluded the director, Nuno Carinhas.

After their brief presentation, it was time for the group to be the audience of another presentation. There could have been no better occasion than Joris Lacoste’s Encyclopédie de la parole in the packed Teatro Municipal do Porto “Rivoli”. It was a play devoted to the relationship among several languages and their musicality. An enjoyable choir reciting fragments of private and public utterances on stage.

Between meals, rehearsals and discussions, various topics came up. The current situation in our countries. What it is like to be an artist today. The intermittents in France. The situation in Greece. Actors’ training in Bulgaria. How the artists carry out their work in each country.

Speaking of utopias, the ISO team continues not only to believe in them but also to fight for them. A few days later, they organized a series of meetings with the objective of having the Academy turn into an independent theatre company that would spread its wings. Several questions were posed: “Where and when shall we meet? How are we going to find financial support? Who is going to direct us? How can we be political without talking about politics?” Many ideas were put to the table. Most of them concerned the dramaturgical choices. The ones that prevailed were about the “Oresteia” as well as Stories from the Bible. The people of ISO realize that in order to enunciate something new first you have to refer back to the classics. And in this sense, their pursuits seem to be pretty well organized. What is sure is that in a few days they’ll have the chance to reunite, exchange opinions and viewpoints once again, as well as share common theatrical experiences. This time, the place is going to be Sofia, Bulgaria. And the journey towards utopia continues.

Pictures: © Susana Neves / TNSJ

 

Published on 16 June 2016 (Article originally written in Greek)

Finding solutions with Ludovic Lagarde

Finding solutions
with Ludovic Lagarde

A master class of the UTE Decentralised Academy

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With its origin in the project of the Union of Theatres of Europe, the Decentralised Academy offers a series of international master classes to young theatre professionals (actors, directors, playwrights or stage designers) who work in the context of theatres which are members of the UTE.

Matthias Langhoff in Athens, Lev Dodin in St. Petersburg, Hans-Werner Kroesinger in Graz, Georges Lavaudant in Palermo, Viktor Bodo in Porto, Eric de Vroedt in Bochum, and Csaba Antal in Moscow…all of them have already conducted a workshop with the Decentralised Academy and have contributed to this enormous work field initiated by the UTE: the training of a generation of artists who are completely European, “united within the difference” to use a phrase coined by Michel de Certeau. Because it is exactly this eternal dialectic of the common and the difference that this programme attempts to resolve — by allowing young people with an artistic outlook and different cultural backgrounds to meet, exchange their points of view, share their methods, while being trained together by an important figure of European theatre.

After Bochum and Moscow, it is to Reims that the season 2015/16 brings the Decentralised Academy. Ludovic Lagarde, director and artistic director of the Comédie de Reims, conducts a masterclass there, dedicated to the text Small Town Boy by Falk Richter. The participants are actors between the ages of 24 and 32, originating from Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Italy, and all have made an appearance in one of the theatres part of the UTE, where they were chosen to participate in the event. Their names are Kata Bach (Vígszínház, Budapest), Maria Teresa Campus (Teatro di Roma), Ruggero Franceschini (Piccolo Teatro, Milan), Delyan Plamenov Iliev (Sfumato, Sofia), and Chryssa Toumanidou (National Theatre of Northern Greece, Thessaloniki).

I encounter them at lunch, it is their last day of work. The mood is relaxed, a great sense of complicity seems to have grown already between the participants and Ludovic Lagarde. It does not feel like they have only known each other for three days. “But three days is long,” explains Delyan Plamenov Iliev, “we worked 24 hours every day, not only the hours of the master class.” Brought together for a very short period of time, it is more in the deepening of an ongoing dialogue, where they find the key to enable the joint work. “We discussed a great deal,” recounts Maria Teresa Campus, “the text itself gave us the opportunity to talk about Europe, because the situations which Falk Richter describes in his text have reminded us often of experiences we made in our respective countries.” And Chryssa Toumanidou adds how enriching it was for her to discover how her comrades imagined her country, Greece. “I have also enjoyed confronting myself with other ways of thinking about and making theatre,” she tells me when we are alone, “in Greece for the grand majority of theatre production the text is very important, here, with my Bulgarian and Italian colleagues I have discovered a more physical approach to theatre.”

While the participants describe how much they gained from such an intersection of cultures, Ludovic Lagarde ascribes his reflections to his artistic practice. For him, working with actors who have different cultural and artistic backgrounds does not have a fundamental impact on his method of directing. Taking into account the singularity of each of the actors on the stage, he explains, is a part of his work as a director. The fact that they have or not the same nationality, language or culture, does not change anything in this situation. Rather he emphasises that, if he was able to note many differences among the participants of the master class, then they were without a doubt just as much the differences of culture and training as of personality.

The choice of working on Small Town Boy by Falk Richter was not an obvious one for him. This text material, forged in the post-dramatic tradition of a more performative theatre style, belongs to a dramaturgical universe that is quite far from that of Ludovic Lagarde. It is mostly for its political dimension that the director has proposed the text to his participants. At once expression and symptom of the evil of our times, Small Town Boy sketches a world of “interactive solitudes”, where the characters, inhabited by contradictory desires, redouble the vacuum of their existence through the verbose expression of a deep-seated contemporary discomfort. An exemplarily attempt at political theatre, the text — when devoid of all the stage directions — also offers interesting challenges to the director.

“Finding solutions”, that is how Ludovic Lagarde modestly summarises the research work which he has led for three days with the participants of his master class. Sometimes it is the physical stage action that he has to work on, sometimes it is the text that is problematic, when for example in one scene a character references an anecdote that is so specific to the German context that it escapes the notion of a foreign audience. This is the eternal question of cultural transposition: treason or solution? Finally, whether it is about questioning the text or about experimenting with the scenic tools, having actors from different worlds was a chance, emphasises Ludovic Lagarde.

In the grand hall of the Comédie de Reims, now unusually empty, I have the chance of watching their last afternoon of work. On stage they speak four monologues, which are very different from each other: irony, revolt, melancholy, stupidity, all manifest themselves on stage, where a space is created over the course of the monologues which is fragmented by the impossibility of communication between human beings. The beautiful work proves the abilities of the young actors in the room as well as the abilities of Ludovic Lagarde, who has managed to create the ideal conditions for an exciting working experience comprising trust and a good spirit.

A master class directed by Ludovic Lagarde With Kata Bach (Vígszínház, Budapest), Maria Teresa Campus (Teatro di Roma), Ruggero Franceschini (Piccolo Teatro, Milan), Delyan Plamenov Iliev (Sfumato, Sofia) and Chryssa Toumanidou (National Theatre of Northern Greece, Thessaloniki) Assisted by Sophie Engel From 2 to 6 June 2016 At the Comédie de Reims, France An event in the content of the UTE Decentralised Academy With the support of Creative Europe programme of the European Union

Published on 11 June 2017 (Article originally written in French)

Europe Theatre Prize – A Jungle of Languages

Europe Theatre Prize –
A Jungle of Languages

ETP – Special Prize to Silviu Purcărete (Romania). Click on the image to see the video (external link)
ETP – Special Prize to Silviu Purcărete (Romania). Click on the image to watch the video (external link)

News

Established in 1986, after nine editions in Italy (in Taormina and Turin), the Europe Theatre Prize hit the international road and reached Thessaloniki, Wroclaw and St. Petersburg, involving a number of major institutions. The fifteenth edition was held in Craiova, Romania, between April 23rd and 26th, in connection with the tenth International Shakespeare Festival.
According to the press release, the Swedish choreographer and director Mats Ek was awarded with the XVI ETP for his ability “to mix dance and theatre in his own personal and very original expression”.
Since its third edition, alongside the main award, the Europe Theatre Prize Theatrical Realities “is aimed at encouraging trends and initiatives in European drama, considered in all its different forms,
articulations and expressions.” Winners of the XIII editions are Viktor Bodó (Hungary), Andreas Kriegenburg (Germany), Juan Mayorga (Spain), National Theatre of Scotland (Scotland/United Kingdom) and Joël Pommerat (France). A Special Prize was awarded to the Romanian master of stage directing, Silviu Purcărete, author of some astonishing rewritings of evergreen classics from Shakespeare to the Greek tragics.
The programme was opened by two performances of former winners, Thomas Ostermeier and Romeo Castellucci: Richard III and Julius Ceasar. Spare parts, as a liaison with the Shakespeare Festival. Then the National Theatre Marin Sorescu in Craiova hosted an intensive schedule of performances, round-tables, conferences and open discussions, a fruitful tool to get deeper into the artists’ world and, on the other hand, a precious platform for international networking.

A comment

The value of a prize can very much depend on the country where it is awarded. In those places where the arts struggle to get attention, facing a deep competition with other forms of expression and communication, a prize can function as a form of recognition, something that is able to create an outburst of emancipation and to strengthen the peculiarities of a language. Very often this function cannot manage to cross the borders of a very specific audience, which remains the same at the end of the day.
Nonetheless, the experience in Craiova showed that the value of the ETP lies in its inclusive nature: it’s a safeguarded environment  in which artists and spectators have the chance to meet, discuss, and open their eyes and minds. The most important aspect of this three-day marathon was the opportunity of diving into so many different languages. The handcrafted dream-like work of Joël Pommerat, for example, proves to be attached to two strings: on the one hand, the quest for powerful and thought-provoking words , and on the other hand, the visual imagery of primordial cinematography. His company, Louis-Brouillard, funded in 1990, was able to draw a picture of contemporary society with all its contradictions through a form of theatre that, in his words, is “a possible place to interrogate the human experience.” Actors, music, and sounds are kept together by a subtle work on light designing, creating a continuous tension in the spectator’s attention.

Although similar in its urgencies (again dealing with contemporary issues), the Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga fills his plays with a stream of words that govern the frenzied relationships between characters of the everyday life. In Reikiavik—presented in Craiova—through a text that’s perhaps too long and wordy, Mayorga imagines the epic duel between two famous chess players (that reveals to be nothing more than a Pirandello-like “game of parts”) as a metaphor for a lifetime battle in which everyone struggles with a destiny that appears to be already written in a book.

Viktor Bodó‘s collective actions (his Sputnyik Shipping Company toure d Europe extensively) represent a very complex, articulated and multi-layered scenic text in which contrasting styles coexist in the same time/space span. Absurd theatre, pantomime, and visual theatre meet with biting irony.

Throughout his intensive work on major German stages and international collaborations, Andreas Kriegenburg has established a signature tone. The most evident characteristic is an amazing visual impact and insight into some cornerstones of Occidental theatrical literature. The German director’s three-hour staging of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise has been quite an experience for the foreign audience, challenged in following the surtitles, and at the same time amazed by such strong mastery of acting and stage movement.

The National Theatre of Scotland, a rather young institution, has proved to be open to tough challenges in producing new plays and pursuing high quality standards. And it’s laudable that an international prize was able to widen its perspective beyond the career of a single artist and towards the definition of a line of work. Last Dream (on Earth) (created and directed by Kai Fischer, presented in Craiova) is a storytelling piece that intertwines the desperate journey of an African refugee to Spain with Gagarin’s attempt to the Moon landing. It’s a sort of radio drama listened through earphones, and nonetheless completed by the sight of the actors/musicians on stage, immobile on their stools, yet kept alive by a very thin path of small movements and gestures.

If, at first sight, the choice to replace a live guest performance with a video projection appears disappointing, the audience was eventually rewarded by being given the opportunity of entering Silviu Purcărete’s mind through the documentary Within A Tempest. The Island (by Laurenţiu Damian). Watching the great Romanian artist directing his actors through Shakespeare’s final play gave back the essence of creative work, with whirling ideas flowing in and out the stage, building up and crumbling down whole portions of intuitions.

Curated by the Swedish critic Margareta Sörenson, the meeting with Mats Ek (more than any other) helped the audience to embark on a trip to this master’s imagery, featuring comments and notes by a group of scholars and critics. Ek’s attention to female characters was only one of the focuses that put this choreographer in the centre of a committed research on the essence of the human being: as Ada D’Adamo stated, “even when detached by a narrative dimension, dance always leans on expression, because it is driven by a human body. It never limits itself to being a frozen hieroglyphic, it’s pure passion in flesh and bones.” Ek rewrote some classic 19th century ballets, marking a new path which is nonetheless in debt to some other artists’ lesson, and yet incredibly personal. Pieces, such as Giselle (1982), The Swan Lake (1987), Carmen (1992) and Sleeping Beauty (1996) are characterized by a sharp care for costumes and gestures, and very simple in the visual approach, often featuring only small objects or pieces of furniture. “I’m in love with bodies”, Mats Ek said at the meeting, “with real bodies, sometimes ungraceful, sometimes unpleasant; but a movement must be authentic, and therefore beautiful.”
The piece Axe, choreographed by Ek, featuring Ana Laguna and Yvan Auzely, was a very gentle and elegant grand finale of the awards ceremony: the simple action of woodcutting (with real wood and a real hatchet) grows more and more rhythmical; Laguna is like a ghost of late past crossing the space and passing through Auzely’s memory, resolving in a heart-breaking last dance.

That’s how a thick dramaturgical texture and a perfect technique establish a strong connection between those real bodies and their complex psychological and emotional substratum: in Ek’s words, “It’s impossible to separate body and head. The point is not how the bodies look, but the interaction between body and actions.” Due to austerity measures, this year the Prize (originally 60.000 Euro and 30.000 for the ETP Theatrical Realities) was drastically reduced; to the point where we might question the sense of such an operation, when more money might be better invested in finding new opportunities for promotion and touring.

The ceremony itself, broadcasted by the national TV station, and attended by a considerable  number of young and non-habitué spectators, was somehow too formal, and at risk to crystallize the image of the current theatrical vitality. On the other hand, the glimpse we get into such a high number of different theatrical languages allows us to compile an executive summary of the artistic reflection on contemporary issues. The conferences, open discussions, and even the informal moments of small talk in the beautiful hall of the Theatre Marin Sorescu might be the highest achievement in drawing a picture of the actual urgency of contemporary European theatre: to get together, to talk, to discuss, to fight.

Rather than recognition, assertion, and agreement, we might need doubt, dissent, and productive disagreement to prove that the cultural level of the multi-national discourse is the foundation on which any other form of “community” should be built.
As in any well-written play, a strong dialogue is made through contrasts. Treasuring these opportunities of encounter, the cultural community might use arts as an ethical barometer; fostering the ability to show the differences, and sometimes to preserve them, might be the way to pose a question: to which point can and must we consider ourselves to be similar in order to be part of a group of free minds?
On this premise, a common dock for mooring ships carrying loads of doubts is the most precious prize we can award each other.

 

 

Published on 24 May 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)

Facing the strange in Craiova

Facing the strange in Craiova

Graffiti turn and face

Sunday, 24th April 2016. A wind coming from Europe blows over the city of Craiova, Romania. In the streets, in the restaurants and in the wide hall of the National Theatre Marin Sorescu, one can hear the music of a joyful compilation of foreign languages. Unknown accents and unpronounceable sounds: English, Hungarian, German, Spanish, French, words from dozens of countries sounding as the same language.

At the National Theatre Marin Sorescu, the International Shakespeare Festival presented two performances by Romeo Castellucci and Thomas Ostermeier as a curtain call. The Europe Theatre Prize comes next with a three-day program of performances, conferences and international meetings. Launched in 1986, the ETP was initiated by the European Commission to distinguish the artists whose works “promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples.” This year it was awarded to Mats Ek (Sweden), Viktor Bodó (Hungary), Andreas Kriegenburg (Germany), Juan Mayorga (Spain), the National Theatre of Scotland (Scotland/United Kingdom) et Joël Pommerat (France).

Sharing with the ETP a long-standing history of collaboration, the Union of Theatres of Europe participates in the event. On 24th April 2016, the UTE presented a public discussion, whose title “Turn and Face the Strange” is borrowed from the David Bowie’s song “Changes.” The “strange” refers to the multiple, fleeting, inconstant world on which theatre attempts to cast a light. It is within such “fundamental relationship to the present” that theatre indeed shares a responsibility over the flow of events that strikes and disrupts our societies. To explore these questions, twelve among theatre makers and administrators from Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy and Portugal were gathered together and invited to join a discussion, moderated by Italian journalist Sergio Lo Gatto. What emerged is a bunch of visions and experiences of theatre, an idea that each one of them believes as essential, because firmly linked to our present time.

Diverse and multicoloured are the answers to Sergio Lo Gatto’s questions. To someone, theatre is a getaway through a suspended otherworldliness, a “mindful pause” within the crazy chronology of our present existence. Others consider theatre as a living manifestation of the “Here and Now”, an imperious reply to the urge to tell about the world and to make a difference. We often put two kinds of theatre in opposition: on the one hand, a “fiction theatre” that’s able to pull us out of our everyday life and let us be free, and on the other hand a type of theatre that aims at having an effect on the world by confronting us to it, harshly sometimes. Nevertheless, rather than one out of these two, thousands kinds of theatre exist: they discuss, they confront, but none of them will ever exhaust the infinity of resources that artists convey to makes us stronger, greater, freer and alive.

This article is an account of what has been said among the most remarkable during this discussion.

A watchful theatre that sounds the alarm

Slovak choreographer and artistic director of Farm in the Cave company, Viliam Dočolomanský, develops a work that stems from anthropological research. His last project “Disconnected” deals with “Hikikomori”. The term, which means “disconnected” in Japanese, refers to men and women who withdraw from social life because they feel unable to cope with the pressure of a society characterized by a strong competition. As Viliam Dočolomanský remarks, Hikikomoris are the “tax that our societies must pay for living the way they do”. By broaching the subject, the Slovak artist wants to alert the general public on the reality of a phenomenon unknown in Europe. In his sense, his duty as an artist is to be “the canary in the mine”, the one who— anticipating the dangers that people might be facing—sounds the alarm. But in order to be able to influence the course of events, “theatre must tackle the real problems”, Viliam Dočolomanský adds. This capacity to attract spectators is the only condition that can enable theatre to act as a real whistle blower and fulfil its duty that is to generate change.

A living theatre to “change life”

According to Pippo Delbono, the problem is not a matter of content, but a matter of form. What the Italian artist wants to do throughout his performances is to inject life in a moribund theatre. Quoting Bergman, according to whom “theatre is a meeting with human beings”, and pointing out his affiliation to Jerzy Grotowski’s “poor theatre”, Pippo Delbono expects theatre to “change our life and points of view over things.” It is something that fiction theatre cannot do, because “actors are phantoms”, he believes. Pippo Delbono’s actors, on the contrary, are “real people”: disabled, homeless or refugees, these men and women who often live on the fringes of society find on stage a dignity to which they cannot have access elsewhere. This dignity lies in their technique. With his theatre, Pippo Delbono creates a space where the beautiful, the poetic and the extraordinary are not the monopoly of the artists, a space where the outcasts talk and the privileged few listen. In the concrete experience of such a reversed structures of domination, in the awareness that it might raise, in the change of perspective that it might arouse, lies the hope of a possible transformation of life.

A free theatre to “stop life”

Founder in 1988 of the Compagnia della Fortezza, Armando Punzo also works with non professional actors. In fact, the Italian stage director develops his works with the convicts of the prison of Volterra. Denying any ambition to do social theatre, Armando Punzo insists on the artistic dimension of his approach: “The prison—he says— is the model of the society, the prisoners are the model of the human being.” He chose these place and people to be the material of his theatre, because they express something fundamental about our contemporary world. But this theatre that tells spectators about the world also owes its strength to its capacity to “create a suspension in life,” “to stop life.” Inside the prison of Volterra, Armando Punzo created a space to read, discuss and perform, that nobody is ever forced to enter. This “out of time space,” far from the confinement and isolation of everyday life, offers a place to search and experiment liberty. Since the creation of the theatre company, “the prison became one of the most open in Italy.”

A theatre of distortion

While Armando Punzo diverts the penitentiary space from its primary logic of confinement, Icelandic director, author and actor Gíssli Örn Garđasson, member of the Vesturport Theatre, insists on the need in Iceland to circumvent the commercial logic of theatre institutions. Allegedly more profitable, stagings of classical texts represent the major part of the artistic programs of Icelandic theatre institutions. While it is almost impossible for artists to produce something else, this constrictive situation obliges artists to develop strategies of circumvention, explains Gardasson. In the hands of the Vesturport artists, classics thus become the Trojan horse thanks to which they can invade the Icelandic and international theatres and make their works known from a greater audience. As Viliam Dočolomanský underlined it earlier, the question of the audience is crucial, since a confined and isolated theatre cannot influence society. This is why Vesturport artists use all their means to give their works a wider audience, especially mass media such as television or cinema.

A theatre of resistance

Responding to this tricky approach of a theatre struggling to exist in a world rules by profit, Bulgarian playwright and associated author of the Sfumato Theatre in Sofia, Stefan Ivanov, defends a theatre of resistance. Mentioning Gilles Deleuze’s remarks on the links between art and resistance act, Stefan Ivanov describes theatre as a besieged entity, struggling against the forces that threaten our imagination, empathy and courage. This theatre of resistance always faces dangers: on the one hand, the danger of institutionalization that neutralizes all forms of subversion, on the other hand, the danger of the absorption by the market that turns theatre into nothing more than a mere product.

A theatre of distance and emotion

Italian playwright and associated author of the Teatro di Roma Roberto Scarpetti believes that these traps can only be avoided if the author keeps a certain distance from reality. Although his theatre obviously tackles the problems of our time, it also has to do with a certain strangeness. Underlining a fundamental difference of nature between theatre and television, Roberto Scarpetti describes the unique power of theatre as the result of a paradoxical movement: on the one hand the author creates distance from reality, on the other hand he aspires to move the spectator in the innermost parts of his soul and body. “I try to keep my distance from reality. But in order to understand a reality which is far from us, we need emotion.”

A theatre of cry

But what happens when reality is so imposing and painful that it is impossible to keep away from it? What do playwrights express when the only words they have are cries? This is the question raised by Greek playwright Angeliki Darlasi. Mentioning the crisis in Greece, she explains the difficulty for authors to put words on the experience, now and here, of an unbearable suffering. “When I try to write about this situation, I cry, I get too emotional about it.” If many Greek artists prefer not to broach a subject which they can only talk about with emotions, Angeliki Darlasi believes that “something interesting may come out from this theatre of cry.” This “something” is the hope for theatre to continue to live and tell the world, no matter what.

The hunting dog

As Francisca Carneiro Fernandes (President of the board of directors of the National Theatre São João Porto) rightly remarks, there is not one way of making theatre. When theatre, through its power of fiction, tears us away from “the fear and guilt of daily life”, it proves itself to be vital in order for us to continue to live. Yet, the many forms of theatre are what enable it to embrace the perpetual movement of history. The duty of the artists, as Michal Dočekal (artistic director of the National Theatre Prague and UTE President) sums it, is to make sure that theatre never become “a hunting dog running after changes but never managing to catch it.”

An imperative to which Sergio Lo Gatto responds by quoting the words of Jacques Copeau on the occasion of the opening of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier in 1913: “We don’t believe it is enough today to create great works; where will they find acceptance, where will they meet both their public and their interpreters, in an atmosphere favourable to their development? Thus, inevitably, like a “postulation perpetuelle” this great problem confronts us: to build a new theatre on absolutely solid foundations. Let it be the rallying point of all those, authors, actors, spectators, who sense the need to restore beauty to the stage. Perhaps one day will see this miracle realized. Then the future will open up before us. […] Let us try, at least, to form this little nucleus from which life will radiate, around which the future will make its great contributions”.

TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE
 A discussion moderated by Sergio Lo Gatto (Italy)
 With UTE members Francisca Carneiro-Fernandes (TNSJ Porto, Portugal), Michal Dočekal (National Theatre Prague, Czech Republic), Jan Hein (Schauspiel Stuttgart, Germany) and Veronika Maurer (Volkstheater Wien, Austria)
 The young playwrights of the “Harbour40” project Angeliki Darlasi (Greece), Stefan Ivanov (Bulgaria) and Roberto Scarpetti (Italy),
 And Pippo Delbono (Italy), Armando Punzo (Italy), Gíssli Örn Garđasson (Iceland) and Viliam Dočolomanský (Czech Republic)


Published on 11 May 2016 (Article originally written in French)

The Own & The Foreign

The Own & the Foreign

"Die Schutzbefohlenen / Appendix / Coda / Epilog am Boden" at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, directed by Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer. Photo © Birgit Hupfeld
“Die Schutzbefohlenen / Appendix / Coda / Epilog auf dem Boden” at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, directed by Hermann Schmidt-Rahmer. Photo © Birgit Hupfeld

In the context of the three-year project CONFLICT ZONES | ZONES DE CONFLIT a UTE General Assembly was hosted by the city of Bochum, where the Schauspielhaus organized a programme of artistic activities and meetings on the subject of xenophobia — “Das Eigene & das Fremde (The Own & the Foreign)”.  At the present time the refugee flow is one of the most pressing issues in Europe; nevertheless it is running the risk of political, especially right-wing populist, exploitation. In this two-article report we try to review the general situation by presenting an account of three performances and related public discussions that invigorated the Schauspielhaus Bochum during the UTE visit.

  • Hiob. Longing and belonging. Read the first article here
  • The Pursuit of an Alternative. Read the second article here

 

Published on 12 April 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)