Tag: Margarita Mladenova

Festivals As States Of Culture Within Nation States

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)

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)