13th International Theatre Meetings - OKNO 2009
4th - 8th November 2009
EVENTS
 michael loizenbauer.jpg "Liguid Loft, fot. michael loizenbauer")
Liquid Loft (Austria)
"Running Sushi"
The glance into the Zen philosophy of a Manga household.
A sequential performance.
Liquid Loft is looking for the path of the Samurai on stage, Feng Shui is exercised in cyberspace and chopstick high-jumping carries the performers into the classical Pas de Deux.
The experience and >reality< of communication are shifting increasingly towards a bi-dimensional surface. An image has copied and advanced itself here, in order to return to its own, two-dimensional reality. The performance lapses as an image progression of a Manga figure, trying to re-animate its private idyll which has become senseless, in order to write a possible storyboard for a future existence on screen.
Artistic Direction, Concept, Choreography: Chris Haring
Dance, Choreography: Stephanie Cumming, Johnny Schoofs
Sound Design: Glim / Andreas Berger
Dramaturgy, Light Design: Thomas Jelinek
Set Design: Annja Krautgasser
Comics: Bert Könighofer
Production: Marlies Pucher
Duration: 60 min.
KIMMO POHJONEN (Finland)
concert
Kimmo Pohjonen - accordion, voice
with
Heikki Iso-Ahola - sound design
Ari "Valo" Virtanen - light design
Finnish accordion adventurist Kimmo Pohjonen's singular mission is to expand the capabilities, sound, scope, performance and experience of the accordion to levels never before attempted, seen or heard. Accordion, voice, effects, surround sound and light show combine to make a unique and captivating performance event.
A visionary of boundless energy, Pohjonen's roots go back thirty years in all forms of accordion music including folk, dance, classical, rock, experimental, theatre music and more. His studies in the progressive and innovative Sibelius Academy Folk Music Department were a critical factor in Pohjonen's transition to the boldly creative and versatile musician / performer he is today.
Pohjonen's "solo" show tours regularly. Currently, he is also simultaneously involved in numerous projects. KTU (pronounced "K2") is the band featuring Pohjonen with Texans Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn from King Crimson. Kluster features sampling genius Samuli Kosminen (also known from Icelandic band MuM). In the Uniko project Kluster meets Kronos Quartet, featuring music composed by Pohjonen and Kosminen, commissioned by Kronos. The Uniko album with Kronos will be released in 2009. Kimmo Pohjonen cooperates with multi-media artist / designer Marita Liulia, and VJ Antti Kuivalainen, dancers and choreographers (Lisa Torun in 2005, Tero Saarin and Carolyn Carlson in 2006). He also composes film music and is invited to many music festivals.
Vegard Vinge/Ida Müller (Norway)
A Doll's House - theatre performance
"A Doll's House" is the first part of Vinge/Müllers Ibsen saga. Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller are known for their uncompromising and radical theatre language - combining opera, splatter film, puppet theatre, cartoon and performance.
"A Doll's House" looks at the consequences of the individual's striving for self-liberation. Money, sweets and tarantella, anger and apocalypse... are adjusted to the two-dimensional cardboard world.
After the premiere a critic wrote (kunstkritikk.no):"... with such grotesque, lively and humorous scenes, that I can well imagine the audience will encounter sometime later on in their real lives - even still on their death beds."
Vinge and Müller received the Norwegian Critics Award 2008 for their second performance of Ibsen's -"Ghosts". "The Wild Duck", part 3 of the Saga, had its opening on the Bergen International Festival on May 2009.
Performance only for adults.
Direction: Vegard Vinge
Stage and Costume Design: Ida Müller
Sound Design: Martin Aaserud
Light: Sverre Randin
Stage Design Assistance: Christina Peios
With: Petter Width Kristiansen, Harald Kolaas, Christina Peios, Ida Müller and Vegard Vinge
Teatr Dada von Bzdülöw (Gdańsk)
"Red Grass" - spectacle
Director`s duet:
Katarzyna Chmielewska:
After reading any of Boris Vian's novels reality isn't the same any more. His surreal visions are so tempting and opening that one would love to stay and live in them irrespective of their bitterness and undefinable sadness. To be the dog Senator who lucks just Łapiti to achieve full happiness, or to be like Lil who has two specially trained cockchafers for manicure-making, or to dance to hit of Duke Ellington.
Leszek Bzdyl:
1 - it's the book of my life (I read it for the first time at the age of 22 and since then I have been identifying myself with a character of Wolf what has undoubtedly influenced my relation to the world for the next 22 years).
2 - if one loves something verya much, one goes blind and looses the distance to it.
3 - we are dancing, not talking. The whole charm of Vian's prose is in its language. Therefore we have to find similar seductiveness in our movements.
4 - we have to start from what is written upon and then to flee from it, to create an autonomous performance, coming true in itself.
This is really an unpretentious performance. Unhurried, one event follows the other, leaving behind a vague feeling of "happy eroticism". Irony, so typical of Dada`s theatre, takes also in "Red Grass" a major part. But it`s never cutting - it rather is the look of a blinking eye on oneself, or on the theatrical relationship between the actor and the audience.(...) An important element of the show is the outstanding, partly sentimentaly anachronistic music of Mikołaj Trzaska, who combines skillfully jazz-motives with catchy electrobeats.
Mirosław Baran, Gazeta Wyborcza Trójmiasto, 13.07.2009
Directed by: Katarzyna Chmielewska and Leszek Bzdyl.
Choreographed and performed by: Katarzyna Chmielewska, Tatiana Kamieniecka, Ula Zerek, Leszek Bzdyl, Radek Hewelt.
Music by: Mikołaj Trzaska.
Scenography by: Maciej Chojnacki.
Video: Kamila Chomicz.
Performer in video: Cezary Rybiński.
Lightdesign: Michał Kołodziej.
Produced by: Teatr Wybrzeże, Gdańsk, Stowarzyszenie Teatr Dada von Bzdülöw.
Eva Meyer-Keller (Germany)
"Death is certain" - performance
Cherries have tender skin, meat and a kind of bone inside them. Their juice is red like blood. When you treat them like humans sometimes treat other humans, then they become human themselves or at least animate objects, which invite you to identify yourself with them.
Inspired by fairy tales, where sometimes objects come to life and so become a projection screen for your own experiences and fantasies. In the performance Death is Certain Eva Meyer-Keller has installed sweet cherries as her protagonists. The stalks are removed from the fruit, but they are not washed or stoned. Instead they are being killed. She takes care of this business manually, in a way which turns the everyday into something brutal.
The viewer is reminded of deaths from films, but also the reality of executions, how they really happen: associations from individual and collective experience in the face of sweet death at the kitchen table.
A performance by: Eva Meyer-Keller.
Production: Eva Meyer-Keller.
With friendly support by: Vooruit Gent, Stuk Leuven.
Thanks to: Alexandry Bachzetsis, Juana Dominguez, Mette Edwardsen, Cuqui Jerez, Martina Nachbar, Rico Repotente.
Eva Meyer-Keller (Germany)
"Shattenspiele" - performance
Welcome!
In this game the participants take on 3 functions: playing evaluating observing.
Each game lasts approximately 7 minutes.
Four games are being played by 8 participants (2 per game) at any one time.
If you choose to play, please sit down in the waiting area, there you will wait, spectate and prepare whilst enjoying a glass of sekt (optional).
During the shadow plays there should be no talking.
You are welcome to play the game more than once.
Performance: Eva Meyer-Keller.
In cooperation with: Kay Grothusen i Rico Repotente.
With helf of: Irina Müller i Tilo Schierz-Crusius.
Eva Meyer-Keller (Germany)
"Handmade" - video
In the videowork, "Handmade" three different catastrophic weather scenarios are being re-enacted using models. Eva Meyer-Keller refers to this process as 'choreographic arts and crafts'. With playful precision, she uses household objects and materials such as a mixer, a hairdryer, salt and water to simulate states of emergency caused by climate change. The scenarios are played out in an aquarium placed on a rotating disk. The glass of the aquarium reflects the room, the camera, tripod and the hands of Eva Meyer-Keller and her helpers, so that the viewer sees both the extreme weather event and its means of production simultaneously. One also recognizes the 'behind-the scenes' sound e.g. of a hairdryer, albeit filtered so as to leave more space for association.
Sons of Liberty (Norway)
"PRE SANG REAL" - spectacle
"Pre sang real" is a scenic picture-book made of highlights from your worst nightmare, from us to you: You are being hunted by a vampire and you run even though your feet are stuck. Suddenly you tumble down a never ending pit with no end, the clown with sharp pointed teeth hunts you, the werewolf hunts you, Margaret Thatcher hunts you WITH HER ALZHEIMER and no one can hear you scream. You drown but cannot swim; the water is filling your throat. You are being terrified by two long stringy hands sticking up between the wall and the bed, you notice them in the corner of your eye just when you are about to fall asleep. Your mother turns around but she isn't your mother anymore but a meat-eating witch in a hammock. The fox comes around and sedates you with chloroform. You fall down a cliff and regret. You think you found your keys but when you wake up they are still gone.
It is like staying forever in a movie theatre. Every sense awakens. It is like getting lost in the woods, every sense gets shut down. Everything murders everything else, hack by slash.
"Sons of Liberty" is Stina Kajaso and Lisa Charlotte Baudouin Lie and was formed in 2003 after their studies at The academy of stage arts in Norway, where they worked together on several projects and developed their own expression in the area between performance art and text based theatre. The duo uses fragments from fiction and references to comics, movies and popular culture as a basis for their scenic experimentation.
Body Snatchers Theatre
[Teatr Porywacze Ciał] (Poznań)
"More Heart Core!" - spectacle
Screenplay, direction and everything you are about to see and hear:
Katarzyna Pawłowska and Maciej Adamczyk.
Katarzyna Pawłowska and Maciej Adamczyk back on stage together! Finally! Some time has passed since we have seen them as a duet. The Body Snatchers have expanded their ensemble and have evolved more towards performance-art. Present point of evolution: "More Heart Core!" And that means explosives, volcanos, geysers, a tornado... What else? It´s up to you - but be sure, that nothing can shock those two!
Ewa Obrębowska-Piasecka, Głos Wielkopolski, 27-28 czerwca 2009
In each one of us, sleeps an old mutt. We want to break his claws, but this would´nt help. The actors of the Body Snatcher Theatre convince us of something else: Just try to love him honestly! Their "More Heart Core" - a production of this year`s Malta-festival - is a really fine piece of litarature on stage. And a literature quite compulsory.
So, we have a woman and a man. Vendor´s trays made of metall in front of them, throwing flyers out of plastik baskets. (...) Then Adamczyk´s machine-gun monologues: "Everything depresses me. Present state of Poland, of Hungary, even of the Chech Republic, although they make good movies over there, which even win prices in Warsaw. - But actually, this even depresses me more, because when Warsaw in ´44 was destroyed to the ashes, the Chech did not move their asses." He says, not totally unjustified.
Katarzyna Pawłowska - suffering from an acute case of Logorrhea - does not have to hide behind her parter: To the audience she is giving out unifying coloured Play-Doh, just as in the good old group- therapies. And here the false peace finds its end, the actors ready for their final duel on stage. (...)
Built on real interaction with the audience, the Body Snatchers Theatre is presenting us really a theatrical pearl. And this one you should get!
Marta Kaźmierska, Gazeta Wyborcza Poznań, 26 czerwca 2009
Performance only for adults.
Teatr Kana (Szczecin)
"Lailonia" - spektakl
Based on motives from the book "Thirteen Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia for Adults and Children and other tales" by Leszek Kolakowski.
The characters from Kolakowski´s tales are afraid of anonymity. They try everything to emphasize their presence, to be noticed, to be distinguished from the crowd, to exist. They believe that once managed to satisfy this desire, they will finally be happy.
Their is a certain similarity between them and the actors incorporating the inhabitants of Lailonia: More and more, they are tempted to "come into existance" on stage. Everybody wants to have his "five minutes", everybody wantshis appearance on stage to be succesful. Everybody wants to be a winner - nobody a loser.
Still the heroes of Kolakowski´s tales do not gain their desired happiness - their actions tend to fail. "Here on earth, there is no success. Certainly, there are some famous people, yet I would insist, that we are all losers", Kolakowski writes. Shall we accept our life as an unavoidable failure? Does that mean that there is no point in making any attempts to fight for one´s own happiness? Do we have any chance to win while tussling with our fate? Do we have any influence on the results?
Adapted and directed by: Mateusz Przyłęcki.
Dramaturgical consultations by: Dorota Semenowicz.
Costumes by: Wanda Kowalska.
Performed by: Kana theater.
Cast: Bibianna Chimiak, Karolina Sabat, Tomasz Grygier, Dariusz Mikuła, Waldemar Nicek, Hubert Romanowski, Piotr Starzyński; guests: Anna Witczak (accordeon).
Boris Nikitin (Germany)
"Woyzeck" - spectacle
Spot lights are lieing about scattered on the stage floor, a fog machine is spitting silently in the corner, cabels and microfones are hanging from the ceiling. "Woyzeck" is transforming the theatre space into a radio laboratory: all that is happening inside is transmitted into the aether. The performer is the moderator and draft of a main character, Buchners play is the starting point and in the center is Woyzecks scream: "what is speaking?". An evening changing between a strange lecture performance and an experimental radio show.
concept and director: Boris Nikitin, performer: Malte Scholz
Goodiepal (Denmark)
"Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra - RADICAL COMPUTER MUSIC" - performance
Goodiepal or Gaoudjiparl van den Dobbelsteen, whose real name is Parl Kristian Bjorn Vester, is a controversial Danish/Faroese musician/composer. The eccentric and self-made Goodiepal has influenced the course of modern music through radical excursions into computer technology and media art. He performs and lectures about his work and ideas worldwide and has until recently been employed as a teacher at DIEM (Danish Institute for Electro-acoustic Music) at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark. Goodiepal declared intellectual war against the stupidity in modern computer music and media art, which is to say against The Royal Academy of Music, when he quit the job in 2008. As per 2009 he lives in London.
In the performance "Mort Aux Vaches Ekstra Extra - RADICAL COMPUTER MUSIC" 50 people will get a book with extraordinary ideas of Goodiepal. There will be installation (instruction?) on the floor. In such circumstances Goodiepal will call us from America and give an unique interactive lecture. Everyone will have a chance to learn some rules of RADICAL COMPUTER MUSIC. The performance will take 1 hour and 25 seconds.
Edit Kaldor (Hungary)
"Point Blank" - spectacle
Point Blank is a visual theatre performance in which the narrative is constructed by using paparazzi-style photographs of everyday situations.
The 19-year-old Nada has been secretly observing people for years, taking spy-photos of them, capturing their private moments. The core of her interest is to trace the various life-strategies that people follow. She wants to map out the options for herself. Driven by this curiosity, she becomes witness to a wide range of - at times extreme - human behaviour.
The performance is an occasion for Nada to structure her 'archive of possibilities'. Together with the audience she contemplates the images, and looks for the implications and patterns that emerge. She aims to get a comprehensive overview and to reach a conclusion: the vision of a life worth pursuing.
Point Blank premiered in 2007 at the KunstenFestivaldesArts in Brussels, and has since been performed at theatres and festivals in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Serbia, Ireland and the United States. It continues touring in the coming season.
Edit Kaldor lives and works in Amsterdam and Brussels and makes theatre performances that tend to integrate the use of digital media, like Or Press Escape (2002), New Game (2004), Drama (2005), Point Blank (2007). In the past few years her work has been performed widely in Europe and beyond.
Ludomir Franczak (Słupsk)
"Erft projekt" - performance
ERFT Project tells the story of my grandmother - Józefa Wanda Kraus (...) The story of my grandmother is one of many war time stories - at the same time it is the story of my family, connected with its identity.
I'm interested in remembrance's process. I want to find out how the facts of history were remembered and modified in the mood of a family secret - whispered in corners.
I want to expose the way in which a legend arises and how does it influence our life.
The result of the project is a spectacle/performance/installation in which sound, theatre, visual and historical media are mixed together.
Ludomir Franczak
