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?

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)

Festivals As States Of Culture Within Nation States

From 24 November 4 to December in Cluj (Romania) the fifth edition of the Interferences International Theatre Festival took place. “OOOO – The Dream Of Gogol” (based on “Nevsky Prospect”, “Marriage”, “Ivan Fiodorovich Shponka and his Aunt” and “Diary of a Madman” by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, written and directed by Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev) by the Sfumato Theatre Laboratory (Bulgaria) was one of the 22 performances, coming from 14 different countries in 13 languages, all of which constituted the rich programme of the event. That was the second participation of the troupe in the ten-year history of the festival, following their visit with “Jean, Julie and Kristine” (after “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg, directed by Margarita Mladenova) in 2012. The Sfumato, UTE member since 2011, is a theatre-laboratory, aiming at in-depth theatrical research through long-term programmes, masterclasses, workshops and parallel programmes.

Prof. Margarita Mladenova - © Simon Varsano — Prof. Margarita Mladenova – © Simon Varsano

Prof. Margarita Mladenova, a theatre director and a cofounder of the Sfumato (together with Prof. Ivan Dobchev), tells us more about her immediate impressions of the festival from the perspective of a participant in two of its editions; the role and the meaning of festivals in the contemporary cultural situation; and the place of festivals in the own artistic perceptions of the troupe:

The Sfumato Theatre Laboratory regularly participates in festivals worldwide. In your opinion, what is the role of festivals in our current cultural and theatrical context and where on this map would you place the Interferences International Theatre Festival?

The Sfumato is a festival theatre. Not because we deliberately create works meant exclusively for festivals, but because, especially in our contemporary context, festivals are those cultural and artistic spaces that are interested in the quest for a more unusual language, innovative methodologies, creative techniques and processes. They are “states of culture within nation states”, which insist that theatre as a living form of art should remain a form of art.
For us, Interferences is one of the major theatre festivals in this part of Europe. We have long-term contacts and partnerships with about forty festivals. We have participated at many of them several times — in Avignon (France), Essen (Germany) and Nancy (France), for instance. We have been to Japan, Korea, and we have visited festivals in Central Europe many times. But for Ivan Dobchev and me, and for our actors, the participation at the Interferences Festival brings a sense of completeness and satisfaction due to the high levels of consideration, implementation, nurture and accomplishment of this festival space. Beginning with the minor details, through the team and it’s the attendance to the forums envisioned in the programme — I have in mind the follow-up meetings and the discussion instead of simply showing the performances. And the audiences; because this festival has one very thoughtful and knowledgeable audience, which has been nurtured. All encounters with them seem to me as if one were attending a music concert, where everyone in the audience knows the notes and the scores.
For example, we had a very powerful discussion after our performances. And there we talked about how different “OOOO – The Dream Of Gogol” is from “Jean, Julie and Kristine”. The spectators were able not only to distinguish them, but also to reason on those differences in an analytical and artistic perspective. That means that there we encounter a developed, watchful and sensitive gaze, echoing our own processes and intentions. For us this is significant in terms of having a future instead of simply having a full house, a nice performance, applause, and then return home. The real effect, the efficiency of those meetings, goes beyond our stay there.

And is there something that can make the whole experience even more fruitful?

There is one wish of the troupes that is always present when they are invited to a festival: to have the chance to stay longer than the time needed for their participation in order to be able to see other performances of the programme and to meet with colleagues. Fundamentally, this is in the meaning of festivals: for artists to gather in the first place, and to sojourn in a community. But, particularly since 2010 and since the enforcement of the logic that the performance needs to be placed as a commodity on the market, this notion has changed its pathos. Now festivals are more for the audiences than for artistic encounters. Yet, in my opinion, theatre should not give up on this. It is exactly in this situation that festivals need to want and quest for possibilities to open up spaces for artistic collaborations. Because there is no other place where artists can meet other artists outside these special festival territories. We have discussed that with the Interferences Theatre Festival’s organizers and this is their will, too; but the limitations are many.
However it is through those reverberations among us that the system opens up and chain reactions and theatrical collaborations occur. And they can become as a relay through time. Some things might end, and some might last or bring into the world their natural continuations. And when we, the theatre makers, have this way of thinking and need, no one can avert us from gathering together in such communities.
Look at UTE masterclasses, for example. We send interesting young people, open to learning through experience. Since 2011, when the Sfumato became a member, up till now we have sent more than ten participants. Two of them, who attended Lev Dodin’s masterclass in Saint Petersburg, met other people there and together they decided to form the ISO Theatre in the frame of the UTE that is now striving to create its own, permanent existence.

Etymologically speaking, “festival” derives from the Latin “fēstīvus”, meaning festive, merry, joyful. We know that ancient theatre is also tightly related to the feast, the ecstatic, the interruption of the everyday, linear time and opening up space for vertical connection with the transcendental. In this sense a theatre festival has to multiply the festivity, to make it a feast of the feast within the feast. Is that what contemporary theatre festivals do?

This is the pathos of every festival and it remains there. No matter what its priorities, themes, own pain and subject of curiosity of the given edition are. Theatre itself, the nature of the encounter, occurs in a greater reality; on the borderline between truth as “we all know it”, as a daily routine, and the extraordinary, the exceptional, the festive, the complete existence of art. The two are merged together intensively and not at all mechanically, but exactly through this edge, where the performance itself exists as a greater reality.

And the polygon that appears as a result of adding together all the “edges” of the performances, included in the festival’s programme—

—lifts up this entire existence vertically and does not conform to the horizontality of daily life. It is extraordinary.

Earlier you mentioned festival audiences. In this logic, they are different than the ones regularly entering the building where a troupe performs and where the performance is created. In that sense, the chance of meeting with them is singular. Does that intensify this encounter, and how does it alter it?

A festival participation, with its specific presence, voltage and concentration, makes the troupe and the whole crew hungry and long for a higher encounter. That is also valid for the audience, seeing a performance that cannot be seen outside of the festival’s programme. This singularity of the encounter gives it exceptionality and intensity. The festival performances are always more inspired.
Even though when I say “more” and I begin to think about how in the Sfumato, for the tenth year now, two of our performances of the “Strindberg” programme — “Jean, Julie and Kristine” and “Dance of Death” — that have been all around the world, are still on stage. They have had extremely powerful vertical motions in their encounters with audiences. And they have preserved that spirit. The performance absorbs, creates memory of exceptionality, which is later stored and reenacted; because, in principle, every single night the encounter with the audience is an exceptional experience; for the performance, and for the spectators. This is how we should think of it. The other is inertia.

And this exceptionality, transitory, and yet endurance; the live encounter with its high risk, vulnerability, but at the same time its resilience: the coexistence of all those entities is partly what makes each theatre performance a unique experience.

It begins now, it develops now and it happens again. It is fragile but at the same time it is vigorous. It fights for the higher encounter. In that sense festival participation accumulates and charges the performances not only with self-esteem, but also they generate energy that allows them to endure harder and harsher situations later on, for example, to handle more indifferent encounters.

We talked about what festival participations generate and add up. But is there something that gets lost and worn out?

Of course. The Sfumato Theatre has been travelling for thirty years now. And the encounter of the foreign spectators with our fervent performance is significantly more responsible and difficult, especially through the language barrier and the surtitles. The spectator’s perception is divided. He or she needs to read above what the actor is saying and at the same time to embark on a journey with the performance; to enter into it through his or her senses.
In our meetings with audiences throughout the world we have discussed that many times. It is a delight that there is a group of spectators who claim that — even if they do not know the text beforehand, as there are people who are familiar with the plays and the communication with them is much more straightforward — they just leave off reading the surtitles and enter into the performance. They take a look only when it is crucial and in context they understand. Senses tune to a level of expression that is above or underneath the linguistics, which is purely theatrical. This is where the encounter happens. And within it both sides mature. Language is not the only “track”. What is being said does not clarify what is being done. That happens through the energies, scores, choreography of living, gesture, which is also a text, movement, that is a text and a message.

And, if we are to bring this conversation back to the chronological notion of linear time, we have to admit that this extraordinary encounter with the audience happens for a limited number of hours. “OOOO – The Dream Of Gogol” had two performances at the Interferences International Theatre Festival in one day, each of them lasting about two hours. In this light, in order to take a look at festivals from a more practical perspective, could you tell us how much time, effort, travelling, preparation, etc. goes into it for everyone involved — from the actors to the technical crew?

I can answer that immediately. The participation took us four days. On the first day we left early in the morning and arrived late at night. The next day we began adapting the performance in the late afternoon until sometime late at night. On the day of the two performances we continued working on the adaptation. Those are the complex, uneasy, hidden from the sight of the spectators’ hours of adapting each part of the performance. Of course, everything is already arranged in a long correspondence on the technicalities beforehand. And yet, no matter the preliminary preparation, for everything to happen — to place the scenography in slightly different scales, to adapt everything, to involve the actors, to check the surtitles, and everything to match each other and the two performances to begin — takes time. Afterwards we had performances at 4 p.m. and at 10 p.m.
The next day we had a discussion at 10 a.m. We were back in the bus at noon and arrived in Sofia around midnight. It is challenging, but we love to travel. We have always wanted it to be that way. Our actors and our crew do not complain, no matter how heavy the journeys are. Actually there is this spirit of travelling, it is pleasing that we spend those hours together and can say unspoken words about the performance or something else. Other times they just play “word association” games, listen to music, and we stop wherever we want to. This is a continuation of our coexistence. And everyone who is involved in theatre is prepared for this.
The nomadic code of living is fundamentally inherent to theatre. Many theatres nowadays have settled and do it rarely. And when they do it, it is difficult for them. Whereas we have adopted this model from the very start. When we created the Sfumato as a theatre laboratory, questing for new expressions and contents, we very much wanted not to “look down” on our feet but to be able to verify our quests through encounters; through formats such as the workshops. They precede all our bigger processes and are a basic model of the Sfumato’s existence. And when we have a work as a result of that, we want to test it through demanding festival participation or responsible tours, in front of other audiences and measures.
We insisted to be like this from the very start and that is the reason why since the beginning we have organized the “Sfumato Reviews”. There we invite our partners to come to Sofia. They come and see what we do and invite us. We go, and other festival curators see our performances there, and later invite us. When we attended the festival in Avignon (France) with “The Black Fleece” (author’s performance, co-directed with Ivan Dobchev and created as part of “Archetypes” programme, 1997 –2000), for example, Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (Japan) had sent their curators. They saw the performance and immediately after it ended invited us to their festival.
And this is the most natural and unyielding way that things work. That is why we organize these formats, where someone who is curious about the Sfumato’s work can come and see it. We prefer not to rely on recorded performances, because they cannot substitute the live gaze and the live encounter. And this live experience is there and will continue to be there. And the Sfumato will exist as long as the live experience exists. If, for any reason, we settled down and embraced the existence of a theatre that simply struggles to survive, the Sfumato will become extinct.

Published on 21 December 2016 (Article originally written in Bulgarian)

Art, Economy, Europe. Strategies against dystopia

Art, Economy, Europe.
Strategies against dystopia

In the magnificent hall of the Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória in Porto, the Teatro Nacional São João (TNSJ) and the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe (UTE) called a roundtable conference on the theme “Economics, Art and Europe”.
In the context of the three-year project Conflict Zones, the conference — among the side events of the UTE General Assembly, together with a showcase — was opened in front of the delegates from all the 18 member theatres, an opportunity to put up a more and more urgent reflection in the context of an international setting.

The speakers’ table dug the pathway to a complex and compelling discussion, able to cross different and yet complementary areas of work. The researcher Tomáš Sedláček (Czech Republic) is a man of science in the first place; the artistic wing was represented by the director of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Sergio Escobar (Italy) and the artistic director of the TNSJ, Nuno Carinhas (Portugal); the political realm was represented by the mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira. The president of the administrative board of directors of the TNSJ, Francisca Carneiro Fernandes, moderated the discussion.

When one tries to establish a link between the three topics, an immediate response comes from the fact that economics and arts have always been closely tied to one another, with artists’ lives fed to rich patrons, the whole artistic expression at the mercy of public or private funds, or the cartel of the collectors reigning over this or that trend in visual arts. One of the questions raised by such a conference could easily be: which kind of influence can derive from Europe as a political and socio-economical environment?

In the words of Francisca Carneiro Fernandes, and of the all three speakers, “Europe” is almost always paired with terms such as “in crisis”, “shifting” or “under threat”, and the major question is most likely how culture and arts can or cannot lend a helping hand in such a scenario.
The Czech essayist and lecturer Tomáš Sedláček, author of the bestseller book Economics of Good and Evil, is saluted as one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary economics, especially because of his inspiring ideas about “economics as a cultural phenomenon.” Far from considering stock markets and indexes a mere system of an addiction to numbers, Sedláček’s conception promotes a reconceptualization of the whole ratio about macro-economics, leading to a realm where economics is the endemic factor of societies, closely attached to the collective production of myths, religions and philosophies.

THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE SOCIETY

Showing a fundamentally positive attitude, Tomáš Sedláček admits that certain “regulatory mechanisms” might not be perfect — still incapable to avoid bloodsheds and wars — but they are in fact guaranteeing a stable situation. And yet, in such a view, the relatively stable situation of societies is not regulated by the “invisible hand” of economics: that presumed eminence grise, silent and mysterious, is in fact the result of a complex net of material relations, it’s a product of our own culture. The society itself reacts almost spontaneously to certain drifts of economics, giving birth to “a generation of hippies” that counteracts a too profit-oriented economy or to a Kafka that stood up against an excessive fascination of the Austro-Hungarian Empire towards bureaucracy. Another bright example comes from Sedláček’s homeland, with the “Velvet Revolution” in which arts saved politics from a total collapse.
The key to this mysterious balance seems to then lie in the awareness of such interconnections between areas that react to one another following a subterranean turmoil of an action-reaction process. The Czech economist poses the core of such turmoil in cultural movements, stating that the actual role of intellectuals and thinkers is “to keep these channels clean for communication.”
“European / American civilization is based on democracy and capitalism”, Sedláček continues, “two things that, so we were taught, are supposed to go hand in hand. And yet, the Western world has managed to export capitalism but not democracy”. This turns out to be a huge failure. Even Karl Marx argued that “capitalism is the strongest machine to make nations rich”, but the mere act of exporting capitalism is not enough to bring wealth, and can be extremely dangerous when it doesn’t come with the “handbook” of democracy.

THE RELIGION OF ECONOMICS

One should not trust a totally deterministic definition of economics as “a technical analytic science/physics-oriented area”, while it is in fact “ideology covered in disguise of mathematics.” Those very ideologies end up autonomously defining the good and the evil of certain attitudes in administrative and governmental policies.
One of Sedláček’s powerful examples is corruption, which historically used to be considered bad practice because of being directly associated with the act of stealing. Today, instead, it needs an economic reasoning to be seen as wrong. This is because — and here is the other major statement of Sedláček’s above-quoted book — the greatest part of our evaluations on economic phenomena is nowadays confronted with GDP growth.
Quite evidently, the most dangerous risk is to use GDP growth as a touchstone for all socio-cultural manifestations. As the speaker underlines, arts were never supposed to speed up the economy of a nation, but they can slow down the pace of a profit-driven society and give people the extraordinary opportunity of a pause, a hiatus that favours the blooming of thought and knowledge, of emotions and understanding.
In other words, while Gross Domestic Product measures the material growth or decline, arts and culture mark the time of a spiritual florescence. As a matter of fact, the explosion of totalitarian and anti-democratic regimes as foreseen by dystopian literature found its root in the ban of arts and culture, which are to be considered as a barometer for the integrity of societies; a function which is very hard to visualize, because art in some ways escapes the responsibility of being directly useful. Nevertheless, it holds the innate ability to produce meaning, when confronted with the effective expectations of growth claimed by the individuals and, consequently, by the social structures that they compose.
Sedláček’s point is that we are living in a world that is totally based on the act of producing. Nothing around us can be called “natural”, everything is “artificial”, everything was built by humans: even the possibility to travel the world is submitted to artificial material processes (technology and identity regulations).“Our work”, Sedláček says, “is never done, it keeps on growing and growing with no reaching a point.” Finding its way through this chain-reaction of implementing reality, art may be a sort of bell that announces a ceasefire.

SUBJECT-OBJECT REVERSAL

An example from contemporary mythology is brought up to explain this process. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Mordor, the villain, created the ring putting “so much power in it that its destruction brings destruction to Mordor himself: the Lord of the Rings is the ring itself” This is very similar to what has happened with economics: we have defined our lives by economic standards, so much so that they have taken complete control over our lives; essentially, economics has become the master of humans. In this sense, putting one’s faith and, more importantly, one’s mind on the things that can face and balance this absolute power is crucial: in a crisis such as the one we had in 2008 and 2009, “if a certain help hadn’t arrived from the area of politics, finance would have destroyed our civilization, exactly because it is based on it.”

POLITICS AND CULTURAL MANAGEMENT

After such a prolific theoretical introduction, it’s perhaps interesting to compare the contributions of the Mayor of Porto, Rui Moreira, on one side and the Director of a national theatre such as the Piccolo Teatro, Sergio Escobar, on the other, to understand some of the strategies carried out by two crucial actors in this scenario.
Escobar introduces the concept of the “improbable” to focus on the role of the arts. Quoting the French composer, writer and programmer Pierre Boulez: “Culture is that human activity that makes inevitable what is highly improbable.” In Escobar’s view, a reply to the refrain that “art is useless” is that “criteria for usefulness are self-referential towards economics”, while the role of culture is namely to put in crisis certainties and stable knowledge, “which are able to freeze the probable”. It was Edgar Morin who said: “The unexpected is possible, the metamorphosis is possible. Hope is the possible not the certain.”
Culture seemed to be at the center of mayor Moreira’s project when he was running for the elections in 2012, and it’s his concern to underline how finances have been growing through the current mandate, not without completing some important tasks as the creation of the Rivoli Municipal Theatre, a playhouse of and for the city.
In Moreira’s political perspective, culture has to be put next to two other accesses: economics and social cohesion, capable to “free the genie from the lamp and lead to a rebirth of the city.” The key seems to be in a basic change of attitude, from being mere “spectators” to becoming “actors in the change”, not following individual agendas, but rather acting as a collective, as a community of individuals. If Moreira says that “the city itself can be an actor”, Escobar talks about the “sensibility of citizens”, a very subtle category to take care of.
For both speakers, and referring to Sedláček’s talk, the question of bureaucracy is certainly crucial, because all contemporary democracies are going through hard times in terms of the functionality of an institution and a deep crisis of political representation, two themes that are responsible for a civic application of cultural conscience.
Escobar doesn’t believe that bureaucracy is the cause of the faults of the EU, most likely a sort of closure towards international relationships that produced “fear, then egoism, then nationalism”, a situation that is also reflected in domestic affairs and particularly in cultural management. Moreira still looks at bureaucracy as a barrier towards a healthy and correct perception of democracy, and he argues that a better understanding of the current media and communication environment might be a key to at least locate the centre of the problem. “With the end of traditional forms of communication (newspaper, TV, radio) and the advent of social networks, we are hitting disinformation. Using devices that can execute everything we want exactly in the way we expect it, we no longer need representative democracy.” And here’s the most dangerous obstacle to social cohesion.
“Culture is then going to replace what was served to us through the media and information.” Moreira underlines how Europe, no matter what the GDP states, still can boast leadership in the cultural production and heritage: a collective act of preservation should be the starting point to prove to the rest of the world that this record doesn’t come from a false perception.

THEATRE IS AN ART OF TIME, LET’S GET TO WORK!

If before “the business of business was business”, according to Tomáš Sedláček, the role of economics is changing. If one wants to sell beer, a brewery won’t be enough: the business of a brewery is now most likely “to harvest beer culture.” Culture is free to produce beauty and richness for the soul when one realizes that it’s first of all an act of harvesting.
Nuno Carinhas’s quiet and discrete voice brings up a strong allure of passion, that in some ways introduces his latest production of Karl Kraus’s The Last Days of Mankind, when it presents theatre as “a space for the free movement of people’s ideas and meanings”, “a democratic taste for sharing in opposition of the fashionable representation of unanimity of taste.”
Thus, theatre can become a useful instrument against a neglected memory, to organize a more aware idea of the future. But, as an “art of time”, it must represent the opportunity for a change of pace, a moment of reflection that injects a different time in such a voraciously rapidity-oriented everyday life. “When the world is nothing but silence, there will be narratives for clandestine listening”, but we need to awake our needed time, a special momentum entirely dedicated to listening, instead of a frenzy search for permanent virtual connection. In a media-filtered reality, Carinhas invites everyone to remember the Europe of the Rome Treaties, signed 60 years ago, “before fear” and suspicion of the other.
One might argue that looking at the past as an era with no fears is dangerous: the tensions were profound also at the dawn of Europe. However, Carinhas’s talk goes beyond that; it is a quest for a contemporary model based on the power of free speech in the first place, in these very months where we feel a certain threat by certain politics of repression.
“My Europe”, he argues, “is the Europe of authors, because it is through them that I can perceive the present time. And then, how can we accept that authors are still censored and persecuted in Europe? How can we admit that the other, the different, the foreigner is put into question and negated? We know that negation will haunt us in coming times as a labyrinthian network of walls supported by the complacency of the cynics. So, let’s get to work: Europe is a favourable ground to built communion and usury, fanaticism and freedom of thought, destruction and remorse, populist rhetoric and poetic indignation. We will all have to understand how to live together before a series of collapses defeat us.”

Published on 13 December 2016 (Article originally written in Italian)

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).

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

a comment on the ISO residency in Porto

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)

Theatre structures in Europe. Arts between economy and identity

Theatre structures in Europe.
Arts between economy and identity

In the context of the Conflict Zones Network programme of the UTE, the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Italy hosted a conference on theatre structures in Europe and the Mediterranean on Friday, the 20th of May.

Six speakers gathered in a room of the theatre school dedicated to the late great stage director Luca Ronconi: Francisca Carneiro Fernandes (National Theatre São João, Porto, Portugal) Sergio Escobar (Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Italy), Enikő Eszenyi (Vígszinház Theatre, Budapest, Hungary), Michal Dočekal (National Theatre of Prague, Czech Republic), Fadhel Jaibi (National Theatre of Tunisia), Armin Petras and Jan Hein (Schauspiel Stuttgart, Germany) and Ilan Ronen (Habima Theatre, Tel Aviv, Israel). Various funding and management models, organizational systems, production structures, and theatre regulation systems were analysed and compared, with a view to better understand how the general principles guiding national and cultural policies can impact the way theatres are structured.
Whilst awaiting a more detailed report, here we try to collect the main topics and points of differences that came out of the presentations, proposing an overall comment.

A financial overview

It goes without saying that the general budget represents the biggest difference between the theatres. Nevertheless, as any member of the artistic world knows, money is not the only issue, and an insight into the lines of work of the single structures can compose a mosaic of many other details, revealing certain important cultural peculiarities.
The Staatstheater Stuttgart can count on a 100-million-Euro-state budget dedicated to the performing arts. And yet, with 94% of it bankrolling opera and ballet, according to Armin Petras “the drama season is financed with only six million.”
In the strategy adopted by the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, private sponsors play an important role: since only 17% of the general budget (around 20 million) comes from the Ministry of Culture and the Chamber of Commerce, the rest is provided by the municipality, private institutions and, according to Escobar, “50% of self-financing from ticket sales.”
Despite the presence of a Central State Funding (FUS), the management models of Italian theatres change radically depending on the regions, each one being characterized by a different level of private participation.
The Czech landscape, on the other hand, appears much more centralized and, in Michal Dočekal’s words, is subjected to “an out-of-date administration system that is fifty years-old.” Those theatres that are supported by the municipalities don’t receive money from the Ministry of Culture, but they are paradoxically more efficient than the national theatres, which are experiencing profound difficulties in programming the seasons due to a longer bureaucratic process that causes severe delays in the distribution of the funds.
As well as in the Czech regulation, the Portuguese system (with a budget of only 175 million for all cultural institutions) cannot count on a collaboration between national and municipal theatres either, with the latter working independently. This blocks the three Portuguese national theatres (one in Porto and two in Lisbon, including the opera house) and the smaller but active theatres.
A very delicate political situation in Hungary is responsible for the tough struggle of the Vígszinház Theatre in Budapest. Only 37% of the general budget comes from the state, and it’s necessary to raise a lot of money from sponsorships and ticket sales. According to the tax credit law, certain economic companies can deduct their support to culture from their own taxes, but only in December do they know if in the past year they were profitable or not, so liquidity is a huge question.

Independent companies and schools

Among the seven countries invited to present their theatre structures at the conference, Tunisia shows a strong presence of independent theatre companies (around 600). The National Theatre in Tunis is currently trying to find a way to invite some of them for collaborations and co-productions: Fadhel Jaibi’s artistic direction is hiring as many young people as possible and, at the same time, is fostering the establishment of a valuable training institution. According to Jaibi, founding a theatre school for actors, playwrights and stage directors represents the fundamental access to creation, as long as it has not a purely academic approach, but rather a very practical one, led by professional practitioners.
A theatre school seen as a nest for future talents is also the guideline of the Piccolo, where the school—founded by Giorgio Strehler and now named in memory of Luca Ronconi—is one of the best in Italy, a hotbed for the next generations of actors, directors and playwrights.
The interaction between professionals and theatre students is a core topic also for the Schauspiel Stuttgart that collaborates with two acting schools, with more than 40 students enrolled. As Armin Petras explains, “the aim is to promote a form of cooperate productions, thus the teachers also work as talent scouts. Exchanges between schools are very important and much easier than the one between theatres.”

Networking and international communities

When an event for networking such as this conference casts a light on all these differences in structures and funding possibilities, one can wonder about the opportunities for various countries to work together in co-productions and exchanges.
For Jaibi, this “could help establish new synergies and put the younger generations in touch with international opportunities, considering their profound difficulties in traveling.”
Indeed, an international exchange policy—along with an attentive activity in hosting foreign performances—might be useful so balance and refresh the repertoires of the national theatres that differ from one another also by the presence or absence of a resident ensemble.
Italian state subsidized theatres have no such stable companies, and the same goes for the national theatres in Porto or in Tunis, while Prague employs 50 people only for the drama ensemble alone, and the Habima—even without a permanent repertoire—does have a stable company as well.
As much as the general economic situation and access to public funds, these different sets of resident artists and technicians sometimes influence artistic views, because they dependent on severe regulations in terms of contracts and employment arrangements.
The Schauspiel Stuttgart is challenged to safeguard “a sort of equilibrium between avant-garde and tradition: to satisfy the audience it takes a conservative repertoire, but in order to keep the actors in the city, a clear vocation to the experimental languages is needed. Some Schauspiel Stuttgart productions are well known and appreciated abroad, able to gather much more audience than in Stuttgart itself.”
In Ilan Ronen’s words, “one of the most important steps for me as an artistic director was to understand how crucial it is for a national theatre to work with international communities, which improves the level; and to work with young people.” For the Habima, collaborations between theatres and international co-productions have become frequent.”

National identity and political intervention

Another interesting difference lies in the history of these theatres; that sometimes defines their identity and influences their line of work.
While the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, with its almost 70 year-long history, is the oldest and the first public theatre in the country (before 1947 there were no public theatres in Italy), the Vígszinház Theatre in Budapest is a 120 year old theatre founded and funded by private people, where the director is not nominated by the government but designated by the previous director.
As for the Habima National Theatre of Israel, that derives from the work of an independent group of twenty young students in Moscow during the Communist Revolution in 1917, founding an avant-garde Hebrew speaking theatre in Israel was a primary aim that still stays at the top of the list of intentions since it guarantees a national identity.

Speaking of identity, for every state subsidized institution, that thus must rely on governmental support, there is the crucial issue of freedom of speech, once again related to the history of the single theatres and their relative countries. As mentioned above, the situation of strong privatization lived in Hungary forced the public theatre to be dependent on private companies; the Habima, instead, depends on government loans, which threatens their independence. Recently, the newly appointed Minister of Culture in Israel made some dangerous public declarations about the political issues that must or must not be addressed by theatres. With special reference to the long-lasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “any discourse that even loosely put the integrity of Israeli government under critique”, reports Ronen “is to be banned or discouraged. So the Ministry announced a form of supervising process over every arts institution.”

Dočekal denounces a different form of political intervention: “Some traces of the nationalistic thought that was characterizing Europe at that time seems to be kept alive nowadays and inspires our politicians. The national theatre is not censored or obstructed by political orientations, but the system of hiring and dismissing general directors is not properly regulated.” In Dočekal’s opinion, this doesn’t put the artistic direction in the position of programming a coherent season.
The political situation in Tunisia is also critical, albeit in an entirely different way. As Jaibi puts it, “the theatre that we inherited from the revolution was almost completely lacking an identity”. The Arab Spring (between 2010 and 2011) complicated many things someway, since it had conveyed no artistic or cultural projects. Even though the newly gained freedom of speech has had an effect on media and theatre, the means to foster such a freedom appear very poor. As Jaibi explains, worse than the state censorship is the one that comes from the audience: it’s a sort of ideological, moral and religious censorship.

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

Postcards from Vienna… in a Serbian November

Postcards from Vienna…
in a Serbian November

Walking the streets of Vienna in late November is like hanging out in a huge jewellery store. With help from the Christmas lights, every angle shines brightly, shaping the frame for a peculiar “urban-crossing” experience in which the smallest detail seems to be meticulously staged.

Scene from 'Katzelmacher'. Photo © Andrej Jovanović / Narodno pozorište Pirot — Scene from ‘Katzelmacher’. Photo © Andrej Jovanović / Narodno pozorište Pirot

Nevertheless, before becoming one of the most stimulating and vibrant European metropolises, Vienna used to be the centre of a wide empire, made unique by its stunning variety of cultures and ethnic melting pots. Though these very features played a role in the Empire’s fall, they indeed are the root of a surprising cultural heritage. Now, the Austrian capital dedicates a showcase to the Serbian part of such heritage that has remained active and relevant throughout the years in the Central European and, generally, in the Western culture.

The Serbian November was organized in the context of the Austrian-Serbian Culture Year, in synergy with the Volkstheater in Vienna that offers two venues, the main playhouse and the Volx/Margareten.

Branislav Nušić was the author of Pokojnik (The Deceased), a 1937 classic comedy staged by young director Igor Vuk Torbica, produced by Yugoslav Drama Theatre with members of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Belgrade, where Torbica graduated. Unexpectedly returning to life, the deceased mentioned in the title finds no celebrations but a feud between the members of the family that have portioned his heritage, stepping over every rule of respect. On the huge stage of Volkstheater, the visual and textual structure brings us back to a classical early nineteenth century imagery, though the events are set in the late 70s, casting a light on the communist approach to the creation of a selected ruling class during Tito’s dictatorship. A high pace and a very good synergy between the young actors bring the director to fill the texture of acting and stage movement with perhaps too many tricks that tickle the audience’s laughter, making the political subtext hard to follow, at least for the ones who must rely on the surtitles. The result is an entertaining piece of well-staged theatre that collects a warm round of applause, especially from the Serbian spectators. And yet, the tight bond between the translation and the non-Serbian speakers in order to understand the text prevented that part of the audience from fully comprehending the historical thread that is certainly crucial in such critical operations.

Another production of the Serbian November was able to complete three different, and equally important, tasks: To represent a credible excerpt of the current theatrical trends in Serbia; to give an example of the clash between former Yugoslav and Central European cultures; and to discuss the themes of immigration and integration, so pressing in international political discourse.

The new staging of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher (Žabar in Serbian) by Bojana Lazić flows like an impetuous river through such contemporary issues, lying on a simple yet ingenuous set design and a group of strong and wild performers. The small space, circumscribed by a perimeter of black curtains, is entirely filled with old-fashioned armchairs, lined up to stare back at the audience.

Marie, Helga, Rosy, Gunda, Paul and Eric are the quintessential of the exclusive gangs from the outskirts of a contemporary metropolis: dirty, lascivious, lazy and totally closed to any contact with the “others”. They work for a factory in rural Germany at the service of a scowling boss, Elizabeth, a gangly woman with electrified hair and puppet-like movements. Such a squalid routine, deeply rooted in a genetic xenophobia and apparently impossible to be shaken, will find its balance-breaking element in Yorgos, a new worker from Greece. Though ignorant, barely able to articulate a sentence and initially open to being manipulated by the group, Yorgos learns to take advantage of one peculiar feature: being well-hung.

As in many Fassbinder’s plays and films, the sexual tension is the catalyst of social representation, misrepresentation, and, eventually, achievement. The language of the play is fragmented, dry, raw, and ironically artificial; the lines are continuously interrupted by flashy movements and sexual poses that weave an intricate web of allusions. Lazić keeps the actors in perpetual motion through repetitive acts – they continuously switch seats, take turns grabbing beers from a fridge and playing songs on the radio — creating a representation of the depraved rituals of contemporary intolerance.

The audience peeks at the activities of this absurd anthill of degradation, switching from being a spectator to being an unconscious accomplice. And this proves to be a successful way of portraying the responsibility of society not only in discriminating strangers, but also in keeping themselves away from the construction of a democratic environment. In other words, violence breeds violence, and the orgiastic lynching that puts an end to this apologue is even more chilling as it’s not enough to stop our giggling.

Published on 2 December 2015 (Article originally written in Italian)

#1.2.1 Public Theatres

#1.2.1 PUBLIC THEATRES

Altamente volatile. Director: Massimiliano Civica. Teatro Studio Eleonora Duse, Roma. Photo © Tommaso Le Pera

At the time of writing, the state support system for the Italian theatre was undergoing a crucial change. The FUS (Fondo Unico per lo Spettacolo), operated by the Ministry of Culture, is the national fund that feeds both stage arts and cinema. In February 2015, a new set of rules has been established to regulate the state support given to companies, ensembles, playhouses and festivals. Until this moment, Italy has not had a National Theatre system: the theatres were divided into Teatri Stabili (totally supported by public money through the local administrations), Teatri Privati a Partecipazione Pubblica (partly financed by the state, partly sponsored by private and Teatri Privati (private enterprises that made a living out of the box office). The new norm defines three different models of theatres: the National Theatres, the TRIC (Theatres with Relevant Cultural Interest) and Production Centres. Making use of two committees (one appointed to evaluate the quality of the artistic proposal, the other to monitor the observance of strict numerical parameters) for the period 2015-2017 the Ministry of Culture nominated seven National Theatres, located in as many regions, twelve TRIC and is currently still selecting a number of Production Centres. Depending on the features of such redefinitions, each venue—obviously not all the applications were successful—will be asked to organize different activities, focused partly on groups of resident artists, partly on the hosting of companies and productions from other cities, and partly on the launch of residencies programmes.

This news concerns the venues, and yet the new FUS order also disciplines the funding of the companies, whose application for public money is evaluated on the basis of very strictly defined quantitative parameters. These are tied to the number of documented working days of the members and of the runs registered for each performance within one year. Such rigid criteria might be responsible for the dictatorship (in terms of visibility) of the richer and better established enterprises whose numbers can overcome the artistic level.

At the end of the day, this still needs to be proven as meliorative.

Continue with article #1.2.2 Private Theatres
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Published on 11 May 2015