A rehearsal with James Beckett

Last week I had the opportunity to sneak into a couple of rehearsals of Zakłady na Życie (Plant-Life), the performance that James Beckett is preparing for the Festival a/d Werf 2010. In this work in progress, he is looking for something subtle that escapes clear-cut definitions. Neither fully a performance but also not a work of visual art. Probably the realm where this work could be more accurately placed is that of music. Throughout the rehearsal, James often refers to the performers as musicians. This does not mean that they actually play music, at least not by standard accounts of what music is. But they understand movements and words in a way which is akin to that of musicians. Their craft is not that of emotions and storytelling, and not even that of actions and sounds. Their work is inserted in the universe of silences and notes, of rhythms, repetition and sequences that engage with the time and space of the performance with the elegance of a minimalist opera. It is not by accident that he often refers to the work of Robert Ashley, a major composer and creator or multidisciplinary projects, that extended the boundaries of musical exploration in radical ways. His work Automatic Writing (1979), for example, integrated words that were triggered by his mild Tourett's Syndrome. He justifies this exploration in a fascinating way: “I wondered, naturally, because the syndrome has to do with sound-making and because the manifestation of the syndrome seemed so much like a primitive form of composing-an urgency connected to the sound-making and the unavoidable feeling that I was trying to 'get something right'-whether the syndrome was connected in some way to my obvious tendencies as a composer.” (click here for the complete article)

The forms explored by Ashley -which often include only a restricted number of elements that are inserted into structures where repetition is very important- certainly provide some inspiration for James. On a different level, however, his usage of found objects is probably more closely related to world of contemporary visual arts or to the theatrical work of directors such as Tadeusz Kantor (as I have pointed out in a previous post.) From a collection of unusual relics found in abandoned Polish factories, he has devised a space that offers a glimpse into the life inside those factories. It is not a collection of stories or a historical explanation of what happened there, but rather an artistic interpretation, carefully crafted by the combination of concrete objects and rhythmic sequences of voices and movements, that are both compelling and mysterious.

A second rehearsal with Roos van Geffen.

Today I had the opportunity to see another rehearsal with Roos. Unlike last time, today she was working with all five performers at once (on the previous occasion she was working with only one of them). They were all simultaneously repeating a carefully choreographed set of motions, and yet they looked so different to one another. They would reproduce the same movement -for example, nodding at a particular speed and with a certain rhythm- with astonishing precision and attention to detail. And yet their movements would come across as being radically diverse from those of the other performers. A subtle expression which would strike me as contempt in one of the faces, would appear to be joyful detachment or plain resignation when carried out by the other performers.

The interesting thing is that these emotions are completely in the mind of the spectator (in this case, in my mind). The performers are actually forbidden to try to represent or act out any emotion. Rather, they give themselves completely to the task of following a very precise set of actions, rigorously woven together. When they accomplish this scheme with full concentration, then the audience members can engage with them in a playful and active usage of their imagination, bringing along their own set of associations. Roos describes her objective as “triggering deeper layers of memory” in the minds of the spectators. During the rehearsal I couldn't help thinking about the beautiful book by Yoshi Oida, An actor adrift. There, he often describes how some of the most striking performances he ever witnessed were always accomplished by actors whose mind was “empty”. Empty, at least, of emotions. He explains how, when a complete devotion to a physical task is accomplished by a performer on stage, a state of perfect blankness is achieved, a void which can be compared to a hollow container, which the spectators -in a way which is often unconscious- fill in with their own minds, with imagery from their personal memories.

A rehearsal with Roos van Geffen

A week ago I had the opportunity to talk to Roos van Geffen about her work in progress, Adem (breath). She has been rehearsing for a couple of weeks at the Huis a/d Werf and she just made a short video with one of the actresses she is working with, in order to keep track of her research process. In it, the actress nods while looking into the camera. Subtle changes make the movement appear completely different. At first, it is a perfectly neutral nod, without any hint of anything else. Then she nods with her head up high, her eyes slightly down, but still looking straight into the camera. Later on, she lowers her head completely, still nodding, with her chin almost touching her chest. Finally, her nodding becomes violent, plunging her head into a furious dance. But the frenzy suddenly gives way and all movement stops. I feel tempted to describe the feelings that this movements might induce in the spectators: 'when her head is lifted she looks at us with contempt, when her head is lowered, she looks gloomy', that kind of things. But that is not completely accurate. Describing the movements in such a way is not being true to what actually goes on in the film. And as Roos tells me, the video itself is a poor substitute for the live version of those actions. That is why I ask her if I can see one of her rehearsals, a privilege she happily grants me. So the next day I join her and her team. It is fascinating to see Roos at work with the actors. She looks at them with such intensity, pursuing with them the discovery of actions that can have an peculiar resonance. She engages in this research process with patience and curiosity, looking for something very unique. But what is it that she is looking for? When I ask her, she says that in her performances she is always trying to create a moment of silence, to prepare the members of the audience to enjoy a moment of untroubled calmness. A prime example of this is We, one of her former theater works. There, two spectators were lead to a moment where they could look at each other for three minutes. In most of her previous experiential projects, the spectators had very individual experiences. This time, her work Adem, will maintain all this intimacy, while moving into a more conventional theater stage. This work will premiere at the Festival a/d Werf 2010.

P.S. After seeing the rehearsal, I have to agree that the video cannot capture the whole complexity of what is happening on stage... so I will not embed the video it here. Anyways, I hope these words have triggered the imagination of the readers of this blog, and their curiosity to come to the festival and check out the work of Roos. I leave you, however, with a short interview with her.

VIEWMASTER: The series

“The thing is in a place, but perception in nowhere.”

Merleau-Ponty

On Friday the 26th of February, Finnish artist Inari Salmivaara presented the performance that marked the end of her research period with Viewmaster. After three weeks of intense work with two performers, her work premiered with two sold-out events at the Huis a/d Werf. The result was an elegant exploration of the way in which we perceive the world around us. It had a contemplative rhythm that induced people into sharing the artist's questions about perception and reality. It was a beautiful and sober performance that was greatly appreciated, at least from what I could gather in the after-talks. Furthermore, the original creators of Viewmaster (Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle and Laurent Liefooghe ) were excited about the results. This is the first stone in the road of Viewmaster:The Series, a collaborative approach where different artists will be invited to come and work with the machine that developed last year, after an 19^th century optical effect often referred to as the Pepper's ghost effect.

The following video show an excerpt of the research process:

Alain Platel: the power of exceptional performances

One reason to go to the theatre is having a desire to be confronted with an exceptional experience. Theatre scholar Adrian Keer describes this experience perfectly: “to be ‘moved’ by a piece, to be shocked, stimulated, exhilarated, amused or horrified is, in effect to have a ‘gut reaction’ to it: a visceral as well as intellectual experience ‘that strikes us first in the belly then runs through our whole body’(1)”.

This depth of experience, this combination of a visceral and intellectual shock is not commonly found. As an example of a performance where he found this qualities, Keer mentions Alain Platel’s work Bernadetje, a performance he describes as “an event of extraordinary insight and intesnsity (2)”.

Platel has become a master in crafting these extraordinary experiences. Shocking, beautiful, intense - his numerous performances have accomplished a huge degree of public and critical acclaim through the years. His most recent work Out of Context, draws inspiration from his earlier life as a movement therapist. The performance was developed from an investigation into limited movements that grew into a rich choreography of bizarre beauty. This performance will be shown in Utrecht within the Festival a/d Werf. Below you can see a couple of interviews with Platel about this work. The interviews are in Dutch but the images speak for themselves.

NOTES:
1. Alan Keer, “Desire amongst the dodgems, Alain Platel ad the scene of seduction” in J.Kelleher and N. Ridout, eds., Contemporary Theatres in Europe, Routledge, London and New York:Routledge, 2006, pp.106-119, (p.106)
2. Ibid, p. 107 This performance was also shown in one of the earlier editions of the Festival a/d Werf.

The Viewmaster: performance & workshop

“You know it's a trick, you can see how the trick is made. But you still want to see it”. There could not be a better description for what happens with the Viewmaster, which was performed at Huis a/d Werf last Tuesday the 2nd of February. This is a performance that makes use of the Pepper Ghost effect, an optical illusion discovered in the 19th Century. Through this, people and objects give the impression of appearing and disappearing, fading in an out of sight and walking around in a transparent ghost-like consistency. Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle and Laurent Liefooghe worked with this technique and developed several ways of using the Viewmater over a long research period. They ended up having “a catalog of effects” that they could use. For the performance, they decided to concentrate on only a few of the possibilities discovered for the sake of unity. However, the latent possibilities of this wonderful object still linger around and the creators felt the need to do something about them. In order to further explore the potential of the Viewmaster, they have decided to allow it to grow into a new project called The series. For this, several artists from different disciplines will be invited to explore the unused potential of the Viewmaster. The first of such artists is Inari Salmivaara, who will work at the Huis a/d Werf as a guest explorer of the Viewmaster. Her completed performance will premiere on the 26th of February. Below you can see some pictures of the workshop in which the functioning of the Viewmaster was explained, and the first imaginative exercises of Inari Salmivaara, where she has started to investigate the combination of the Viewmaster with video projection.

Talking to James and thinking about the polish theater master

As I was interviewing James Beckett a while ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990). So many things struck me as similar. Kantor, one of the greatest theatre directors of the 20th century, was originally a visual artist. And one could clearly see traces of his obsessions as a visual artist in the way in which he organized the elements on the stage (actors and objects alike). One of this obsessions was looking for objects with a particular aura, that he beautifully described as “being halfway between the trashcan and eternity”. And this phrase fits the work of James Becket like a glove. The South African artist (Becket that is), was also originally trained in the field of the visual arts, and he has been doing research on industrial heritage in Poland for the past few months. This research is, as he himself describes it, a very “concrete” approach to the industrial heritage of this country. He was looking for objects with a sensitivity that Kantor would have approved of. James told me with enthusiasm how he found an electric transistor that had a very primitive quality to it, “It looked like a bone”, he said. James’s choice of country is, lastly, the final connection to Kantor, who was born in Wielopole (a city that makes part of present day Poland) and who had a conflicting and creative relationship to Poland and it’s history.

Click here to watch the interview: