Tag: ISO

Looking for a strange language

Looking for a strange language

“It’s about speaking your own language in a way that other people are inspired to speak their own language. We rely on the difference between languages and the friction of the images that are moved by these languages. An idea is developed through everyone speaking and a mode of conduct that cannot be traced back to a single person. The whole is neither more nor less than the sum of its parts. It’s different, yet the same.” (Dirk Baecker)(1)

We can only find these lights in the darkest depths. They magically attract us; the closer we get to them, the more dangerous and simultaneously fascinating it’ll be — until we, before we believe to grasp it and simultaneously recognize its shape, find ourselves again in a large ghastly mouth. In hindsight, in your own solving, we then come to realize that the light was only a trap, a deception, that we have fallen victim to. Now that we have landed in the stomach of the fish, now that it’s impossible for us to be with the light, we are in it, as it were. It’s this moment that unites the deep sea fish with a theatre of the foreign, where we believe to have realized something only to then become aware of the fact that we can merely look at it but never see through it.

In recent times more and more international theatre groups have emerged, and reflect on their ‘own’ cultural and societal differences, and thus the conditions for their collaboration. It has been noticeable that these groups have very different approaches to their linguistic and cultural differences. As soon as various language and cultural realms meet in theatre, how we deal with the foreign is not only an important indicator — after all it has always been one, even without multilingualism or the like on stage; what’s more, how we deal with the foreign determines the relation to theatre which either serves as a self-affirmation machine, when you want to make the foreign understandable, or else can be seen as a space that allows for boundary experience, when we look to admit the foreign. That raises the question of how we can develop a language through the collaboration of international theatre troupes that grants the foreign to loom large. Not as the part of a foreigner played on a stage or as a key subject of a festival, or even a theoretical panel in the foyer of a theatre that decorates the repertoire; rather in the way of collaboration, and in the way of how we understand and organise our artistic practice, and how we reflect and include the (pre)requisites for our own work.
This question is germane both to national theatres as well as independent theatre companies, and also to independent production groups, that I consider myself to be a part of. It concerns artists of all kind insofar as they don’t rely on sure-fire success mechanisms and want to make art for the sake of art. It particularly applies to internationally active theatre artists as these types of cooperations reveal differences that need to be dealt with, such as linguistic and cultural distinctions as well as those between the various educational (theatre) backgrounds. How can we deal with the non-common, without standardizing it in favour of a common ‘multi-cultural language’, and to have it dissolve in a commensurable international mishmash by making it fully understandable?
I want to plead for the theatre as a space that allows boundary experience; a place where institutions and groups of artists don’t deprive themselves of their ability to surprise themselves. Both through an art scene that tries to calculate the uncertainty of cultural conceptions and positions a bit too much, as well as through an artistic attitude of being all too sure of one’s procedures. I imagine a theatre that may continue to appear foreign to itself.

The theatre of the deep sea fish

Bernhard Waldenfels says in “Thinking the Foreign” that the radical foreignness is only tangible in a paradox way as it escapes our clutches. I cannot see myself where I am not. The radical foreign is walking in front of me, like an invisible ghost, and I still cannot overtake it. It can’t be alienated, but it stays foreign and can only be grasped as an experienced impossibility. At the same time, it has always been part of the own:

“We learn our mother tongue through listening to the language of others that precedes our own speech. The name we are given is the name we got from others; the same goes for our habits, customs and traditions. All ideas of purity are shattered thereon.” (2)

The subject never really owns him or herself; nevertheless he/she is with him/herself abroad as a ‘not-just-me’. They will only find access to themselves through the foreign, which, however, they can never grasp. This dilemma can lead to great frustration as you never find yourself where you want, namely with yourself. On the other hand, it can also lead to a gesture and attitude that opens up to the unknown, which can touch on security, uncertainty and knowledge. The attempt to take over the unknown seems to only succeed through a never-ending approach, and through knowing that it is never quite conceivable. This approach can only occur as long as the supposed obvious knowledge about oneself and others is also perceived as a linguistic, social and cultural construct. Only then can there be a theatrical approach.

What goes for the subject goes for the bourgeois theatre; the subject who ever since Freud can no longer feel at home in his or her own home, as he or she only represents the tip of the iceberg; and deep sea fish lurk in the unconscious who dare to stare at us every once in a while in our dreams with one eye that is similar to our own and one that is profoundly dissimilar and strange. It can no longer consider itself as a bourgeois situation of enlightenment as the status of the supposed tangible knowledge that should be enlightened has become questionable. Especially since the static knowledge has never really been like this in enlightenment; however, at least there used to be certain bourgeois ideals that ought to have been reached for in order to experience freedom as an independent autonomous individual.

The theatre has always been dealing with representations — just like every person that speaks, thinks and therefore abstracts. The scrappiness of these representations, however, can never be completely hidden, no matter how adept the fourth wall. In theatre we pretend as if there were no abyss where said deep sea fish bustle — between every term and every phenomenon that has to be named; between every actor and his or her character; as well as between the aspirations of a theatre and its reality. A great part of contemporary theatre still largely practices a type of theatre whose means are hierarchical and used for the purpose of an idea in order to depict the world in the broadest sense, without questioning the conditions for this logic of depiction. What’s more, a different artistic practice has been established for a long time already where the central means have taken on a life of their own and become autonomous. Brecht had declared war on suggestions, the opium dens for the people, in order to expedite the attempt of an epic theatre. He did so through making the familiar appear unfamiliar again through the means of theatre, so that things that appear recognized could move out of their inconspicuousness and could be looked at in a different way. It must have been about pointing out the phantasmal content of societal mechanisms, but not without applying them themselves. Brecht seemed to know that theatre doesn’t allow the circumvention of the illusion, and that you can only win over it by climbing down into the “opium dens, the hatchery of the illusion (…)” (3). Nothing works without illusion.

Theatre as a machine of surplus

If it’s no longer ostensibly about theatre offering subjects the possibility to make sure of themselves through the identification with illusions, it can suddenly be about something else entirely. The terms ‘post-dramatic theatre’, coined in the 1960s by Hans-Thies Lehmann as a reaction to artistic theatre practices, eliminates the hierarchy in theatre by breaking up its centre of the literary basis and its interpretation by the director and releasing the means of theatre in order to attribute them an autonomy (again). Light, sound, image, costume, voice, video and text are equal means, and are participants of a performance act that is paid more attention to (4). Theatre as a location of tangible assembly steps into the foreground again by no longer reducing the theatre text to the dramatic text; rather the theatre performance itself creates a text through the “shared time spent in the shared air we breathe in the room” (5). This text is able to reflect the foundations of theatre, and addresses the status of its illusory reality. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we shed the illusion, because it will always be there, no matter how cool you are standing on stage. It’s much more about enduring the ambivalence of the theatre, which always refers to something else, as it has always more than one ground there. Everything is at least doubled. Even a fly that crosses the air and light of a performance suddenly becomes a different fly. There are now at least two flies.

Which brings us back to the deep sea fish. Those beings who lurk in the abyss of representation, and who are on the one hand dangerous and eerie, and on the other can be this fascinating and intriguing precisely because of that; because these mechanisms of representation are displayed in the very moment when the performance itself is addressed. The fly can no longer count as a representation of an ordinary fly, but becomes something else. Yanking up the representation exposes a space that is not yet occupied and doesn’t have a solid form but that means opportunity. And since we can only describe this space through a symbolic, phantasmal which can never only name what we want to name, we have to send eerie deep sea fish into the abyss as a metaphor. They lurk everywhere: between the name and the person who is meant by that name; between the term ‘tree’ and the thing that we point to when it has a trunk, twigs and a few leaves; in our dreams and finally in itself as a metaphor. What do these deep sea fish have to do with the foreign now?

“The foreign can only be conceived indirectly; as a deviation from the normal and as a surplus which exceeds the normal expectations and demands. Talent, gift and forgiveness are some examples; excesses of hatred and violence as well as agony and traumatisation are also part of it. We encounter them on the verge of the ordinary and the extra-ordinary. Without the effect of trans-cultural surpluses, every culture ends in culturalism which revives the old aporias.” (6)

Theatre which continuously refers to itself is as interesting as a conversation in which the conversation partner has to point out that you’re having a conversation, thus blocking the actual conversation. Displaying for the sake of displaying doesn’t seem to be a good concern for interesting theatre. Nevertheless, reflecting on the act of performance is liberating because it can open the space for potentiality as you can strive to think and perceive the conditions of your own thinking and perception. You may think that you cannot completely think everything, and you may perceive that you cannot perceive something as a whole. Room for imagination yawns that allows for something foreign to appear. The foreign is precisely what I cannot denote with the deep sea fish as a term, but what I need to and have to denote. The deep sea fish thus permanently change their form as they repeatedly challenge other descriptions and other terms; they are truly there — behind the light that they carry in front of them like a fishing rod — where you cannot see them until they cease to be deep sea fish, but have always been something else. In a linguistic approach to phenomena of this world we continuously produce surpluses. These are words, images or signs in general that overstate what they want to denote, as they cannot hit it, and they cannot be realised in what they want to hit. The foreign may seem indirect in the light of this surplus; namely as a rest that cannot be realised in the understanding of this thing or this phenomenon, which was to be denoted or ascertained. Theatre permanently deals with signs and images and in doing so produces a surplus, because everything appears doubly and nothing can only mean that one thing. The theatre is a surplus machine. The surpluses, however, are only visible once they are perceived in the act of overshooting.

An artistic practice that manages to get on to this foreign or, to stay with the metaphor, these deep sea fish, and to discover it in the surplus, that don’t defer to a complete understanding of things, meets a changed understanding of subject. This is because it finds less of the ‘I’ of oneself rather than the subject of the unconscious, as Hans-Thies Lehmann comments in the post-dramatic theatre. You need an appropriate location in order to suffer the ambivalence of the subject; to rejoice in it; to play with it; and to experiment with its possibilities and dangers. And the theatre can be this location. Not the cinema, or painting; not the fine arts — the moment of the here and now of a real gathering of all actors is missing here. No, the theatre is the only vehicle, as Samuel Weber describes it, that can be ‘on location’.

This theatre on location doesn’t draw its power from a message that it wants to convey, or from one meaning that it wants to establish; rather it is more open towards the effects it produces as it pays more attention to the moment in the here and now. It sees itself more like an experiment with an open outcome, and tests phenomena rather than merely puts them on stage. The focus does not lie in the depiction of the world rather than in the implementation of the world. However, in this implementation we may and must work with depictions, as the illusory imaginations are indispensable to even imagine anything. It’s less about the understanding of something than about the (alien) experience.

This experience of the foreign is also due to the kind of artistic collaboration. In parallel to the emergence of the term “post-dramatic theatre”, moving the method of working away from the director to collectives and director duos has become more established, especially in the German independent theatre scene, such as done in, for example, the Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop, Gintersdorfer Klaaßen, Auftrag und Lorey, Hoffmann und Lindholm or Monster Truck, and many more. These methods put a plurality of voices in the foreground that allow for an outside perspective instead of following the one genius interpretation of a single director. Heiner Goebbels writes, “Not seeing one’s own lack of competence as a weakness and covering it up but using it as a strength in order to broaden the artistic perspective and to thus broaden the view of the other — this is the core of the collective work.” There therefore is room for the possibility of opening up to something foreign not only in terms of form and aesthetics and its effects on an audience, but also as space can open up in the method itself.

The international theatre collective ISO or (un)learning how to speak collectively

Such artistic collaboration — the kind of collaboration as such, that is — strives to approach foreign or strange space. ISO (International Super Objective Theatre) (7) , which is still evolving, can demonstrate how these spaces can be felt out in the context of artistic, international collaboration. This collective was born out of various masterclasses, organised by the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe (UTE), an association that chiefly unites big national and municipal theatres from European countries. It’s all the more amazing that experiments are being embarked upon here as well through attempting the collective work between members of various language and cultural realms, facilitating space for something new and unknown, also in terms of finances.

The group largely consists of actors and only to a small extend of directors. Some of them work in the independent scene, while others are employed. Everyone has a different educational (theatre) background, speaks a different mother tongue, and lives in different theatrical contexts. It took a while until I could see the fact that we hadn’t found each other ‘organically’ as an advantage. Now I see this fact as an advantage because you collaborate with people who, normally, you would otherwise never work with. On the one hand, that’s because you dally over different aesthetics and are used to different production processes; on the other hand it’s because you tend to move within your national borders when it comes to work. This foreignness amongst each other has led to long discussions on working methods, aesthetics and terms in the course of the residences and masterclasses, which we still have today. It challenges your own understanding of theatre and art, and repeatedly leads to questioning your own ideas. ISO is a theatre thinking space, and a source of friction where we continuously renegotiate what theatre can be. The members’ different educational backgrounds (8) lead to the fact that various working methods come together. One person is used to starting with the text, while the other is used to developing the text in the course of rehearsals; yet another is used to putting the actor at the centre of the work, while another focuses on the image, and the third starts with the situation. This shows: ISO doesn’t want to present homogenous aesthetics; it is an aesthetic experiment. The various working methods aren’t suspended in favour of one working method, but are tested one next to the other, which oftentimes leads to lines between, for example, performance and representative approaches being blurred and starting an open exchange between each other. During an open rehearsal at the Sfumato Theatre, where ISO chose Manet’s painting “Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe” as the starting point of their work, the performance approach was at the foreground, as we played a game of imagination next to a comedic role play that mocked its own ‘role-ness’, next to a psychologically motivated play. The performance was put in the context of an open rehearsal; types of theatre are rehearsed here as well. ISO’s joint understanding of theatre is not founded in a joint interest of one aesthetic; on the contrary, it’s founded in jointly working on what initially doesn’t unite us, on what’s between us. The factor that unites ISO is the common interest in the diversity, and the desire neither to dissolve these differences nor to insist on them. This is why it’s important for ISO that we don’t always get along on stage, as different languages are spoken; French is next to Portuguese and next to German, next to Arabic, next to Greek, next to Bulgarian, next to Romanian. The working language is English, but the various languages play an important role both in the artistic form as well as in the working process. ISO therefore often discusses terms, such as form, role, character and phenomenon. The word ‘form’ for the other can mean форма, forme or formă. Thus, through not understanding, we repeatedly are made aware of the construction of our own language. The word that makes you think will hit exactly what you mean may be a different one. You want to talk about one thing but can only talk about many things. Thus, ISO can never only mean one thing; it always means a contradiction and examination of the not understandable.

ISO’s vision lies in finding a common theatre language. You could also call it a European theatre language since the members, with one exception, are all from Europe. The common theatre language doesn’t mean a negation of all (theatre) languages in favour of one understandable and closed one where all others could be realised. On the contrary: for ISO the opportunity of a joint European theatre language can only exist through ambiguity and the impossibility of translating it. Contrary to a policy of borders and clear differentiations, ISO seeks the dissolution of boundaries — the dissolution of various forms of theatre, languages and identities. They bank on a collective working method rather than the takeover of one person, and multilingualism. The attempt lies in trying to jointly learn how to speak. It seems, though, as if you could only learn how to speak this language by simultaneously unlearning it. You can learn that your own language is a foreign language, not by forgetting it but by becoming aware of its own foreignness; much like staring at your own hand long enough to get this fascinating eerie feeling that it might not be your own at all. It’s less about coming up with a new language than about designing the path to this joint speaking in a way that everyone can speak their own language while perceiving it as a foreign language. On stage this path can for instance lie in using language not only as a means for understanding through which we can explain things. Instead it can lie in making language appear as something foreign by putting the focus on its melody, its rhythm and its tonality, as for example done in ISO’s most recent open rehearsal at the Teatro Nacional São João do Porto where we approached Karl Kraus’ text “The Last Days of Mankind” precisely through the various languages.

Probably the most important aspect of ISO’s theatre work therefore seems to be founded in allowing space for the foreign, the unknown. Characteristically, the collective will deal with Ovid’s Metamorphosis in its upcoming project. For ISO, metamorphosis can be the result of transcultural collaboration which is dependent on a certain openness for the new and unknown. Once on the level of collaboration by allowing the co-existence of various working methods, thus allowing for another, a third working method through this juxtaposition. And also on the level of aesthetics which relies on not dissolving the not understandable, especially with respect to language, and instead maintaining and playing with it.

It seems as if this was a climate where deep sea fish feel comfortable and where they would dare to show themselves in the cracks and abysses. They are rarely marvelled at; we can only see their light flash for brief moments. We don’t want to create a theatre that you watch and then say, “That’s it. That’s the foreign!” We can only keep the promise, or as Lehmann put it in relation to Adorno who, when it came to the arts, considered what was opened up to be more relevant than what was achieved: “Great theatre delights more as a promise rather than the upholding of the same. Aesthetic experience notices the flashing of something else in what is happening, a possibility that is pending and in a utopian way upholds the condition of something announced that is undefined.”

 

[1] Dirk Baecker: “Das Theater als Trope“. In: “Theater der Zeit“ – Arbeitsbuch 2011, No. 7/8, p. 15.
[2] Bernhard Waldenfels, Das Fremde denken, in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 4 (2007), H. 3, URL: https://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/3-2007/id=4743, (20 December 2016)
[3] Frank-M. Raddatz: “Das Theater der Täter”, in: same pbl.: “Brecht frisst Brecht”, 2007, Henschel Verlag, p. 17 ff.
[4] Cf.: Samuel Weber: “Vor Ort”, in: G. Brandstetter, Helga Finter, Markus Wessendorf (pbl.): “Grenzgänge: Das Theater und die anderen Künste”, Thübingen, Gunter Narr Verlag, 1998, p.31 ff.
The predecessors of the bourgeois dramatic theatre had not yet banned this moment of the performance, as Samuel Weber explains with view to the Aristotelian term of the unit of time and location, which, according to Weber, was first in relation to the dimension of the performance, not the plot.
[5] Thies Lehman, Hans: “Postdramatisches Theater”. Frankfurt am Main, 1999, Verlag der Autoren, p.12
[6] Bernhard Waldenfeld, Das Fremde denken, in: “Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History”, online edition, 4 (2007), H. 3, URL: https://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/3-2007/id=4743; (20 December 2016)
[7] The collective came together under the guidance of the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe (UTE) and has been supported by funds from the European Union. Currently the collective is composed of: Petya Alabozova, Balazs Bodolai, Bilyana Georgieva, Khawla Ibraheem, Aglaia Katsiki, Boris Krastev, Benjamin Lew-Klon, Sophie Lewisch, Vincent Mejou-Cortes, Luis Puto, Angélique Zaini, Kim Willems.
[8] The various educational institutions are: ESAD (École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique de la Ville de Paris); Szentgyörgyi István Faculty of Theatre Arts at Târgu-Mureş in Hungary; National Academy for Thatre and Film Art “Krastyu Sarafov”; Acting and theatre studies rom the University of Haifa; National Theatre of Northern Greece Drama School; media and cultural studies at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf; theatre direction at the Academy of Performing Arts Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg; CEPIT (Regional Conservatory for Drama); Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris; Escola Superior de Música, Arte e Espetáculo do Porto; Institute for applied theatre science in Gießen.

 

 

Published on 22 February 2017 (Article originally written in German)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[…]

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

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

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

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

 

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

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

The objects in the mirror are closer than they appear

a comment on the ISO residency in Porto

ISO residency in Porto
© Susana Neves / TNSJ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Searching Theatrical Utopias in Porto

Searching Theatrical Utopias in Porto

ISO residency Porto
© Susana Neves / TNSJ

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

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

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

ISO residency in Porto

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pictures: © Susana Neves / TNSJ

 

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