14th Theatre Meetings - OKNO 2011
"North by Northwest"14th - 22nd October 2011
4th - 6th November 2011
EVENTS
PART I - OCTOBER
ODIN TEATRET
Odin Teatret is a theatre troop founded by Italian theatre director Eugenio Barba in 1964. The theatre is based in Holstebro, Denmark.
Eugenio Barba, born in 1936 in Italy, at the age of eighteen emigrated to Norway where initially he worked as a welder and a sailor. He also studied at the Oslo University. In 1961 he went to Poland, initially as a student of the Warsaw's State Theatre School, and then as an assistant of Jerzy Grotowski, who at that time was the director of the little known Opole-based Teatr 13 Rzedow. After three years of his apprenticeship, Barba traveled to India, and then returned to Norway to form his own theatre with a group of young people called Odin Teatret.
In 1966 Odin Teatret accepted an invitation of the Danish municipality of Holstebro and created the unique theatre laboratory in an old farm. Since 1979 Holstebro is also the base for ISTA, the International School of Theatre Anthropology, a special place of intercultural exchange, in which various, mostly Eurasian theatrical traditions, such as Indian kathakali, or Japanese Noh meet in a creative dialogue. ISTA is also a multicultural network of scholars whose common field of study is theatre anthropology.
Over forty years of activity of Odin Teatret resulted in almost seventy productions, presented all over the world. Among the best known are Ferai (1969), Min Fars Hus (My Father's House) (1972), Brecht's Ashes (1980), The Gospel According to Oxyrhincus (1985), Talabot (1988), Itsi Bitsi (1991), Kaosmos (1993) and Mythos (1998). Barba and his team gradually worked out and developed methods and ideas; since 1974 Odin Teatret has practiced the so-called "barter" exchange with societies without theatrical experiences, like the Yanomani tribe of South America. Performances of Odin Teatret, rich in visual and aural sphere, poetic in mood, and often radical in their political statement, are characterized by the authenticity of the message, making them a special experience for the audience, regardless the level of understanding of their erudite symbolism.
"ON DIRECTION AND DRAMATURGY: BURNING THE HOUSE" - MEETING WITH EUGENIO BARBA, PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK.
LEADING: LESZEK KOLANKIEWICZ.
An important point of visit of the Odin Teatret in Szczecin is a promotion of Polish translation of the most recent book by Eugenio Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy. Burning the House, just published by the Jerzy Grotowski Institute. Unprecedented "professional autobiography" on the eminent director and theorist includes account of his working methods and practical techniques, as well as his own life experiences.
The host of the meeting will be Professor Leszek Kolankiewicz, an expert in the field of anthropology of performances, the head of the Institute of Polish Culture of the University of Warsaw, and a lecturer of the Warsaw's Theatre Academy (Theatre Studies Department), Jerzy Grotowski's collaborator in the period of Para-theatre and Theatre of Sources, prolific author of articles published in Dialog monthly magazine and books Święty Artaud, Samba z bogami, Dziady. Teatr święta zmarłych and Wielki mały wóz.
"THE CHRONIC LIFE" - ODIN TEATRET [Dennmark]
- Performance - ***
Dedicated to Anna Politkovskaya and Natalia Estemirova
Russian writers and human right activists, murdered by anonymous thugs in 2006 and 2009 for their opposition to the Chechnyan conflict.
CHARACTERS: a Black Madonna, the widow of a Basque officer, a Chechnyan refugee, a Rumanian housewife, a Danish lawyer, a rock musician from the Faroe Islands, a Colombian boy searching for his father disappeared in Europe, an Italian street violinist, two mercenaries.
The Chronic Life takes place simultaneously in different countries of Europe in 2031, after the third civil war. Individuals and groups with different backgrounds come together and challenge each other driven by uprooting war and unemployment. A boy arrives from Latin America in search of his father who has inexplicably disappeared. "Stop searching for your father" people tell him while escorting him from door to door.
It is neither knowledge nor innocence that saves the boy. A new ignorance helps him to discover his door. Amid the bewilderment of all of us who no longer believe in the unbelievable: that just one victim is worth more than any value. More than God.
Actors: Kai Bredholt, Roberta Carreri, Jan Ferslev, Elena Floris, Donald Kitt, Tage Larsen, Sofia Monsalve, Fausto Pro, Iben Nagel Rasmussen, Julia Varley.
Text: Ursula Andkjar Olsen and Odin Teatret
Dramaturg: Thomas Bredsdorff
Literary advisor: Nando Taviani
Light design: Odin Teatret
Light advisor: Jesper Kongshaug
Scenic space: Odin Teatret
Scenic space advisors: Jan de Neergaard, Antonella Diana
Music: Odin Teatret, traditional and modern melodie
Costumes: Odin Teatret, Jan de Neergaard
Technical director: Fausto Pro
Assistant directors: Raúl Iaiza, Pierangelo Pompa, Ana Woolf
Dramaturgy and directing: Eugenio Barba
First performance: Holstebro 12 September 2011
Production: Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Holstebro), Teatro de La Abadía (Madrid), The Grotowski Institute (Wroclaw)
*** CHRONIC LIFE performance - infos for audience
*** The tribune for the spectators can have only two wheelchairs, which will be provided by Odin Teatret. Spectators in electric wheelchairs will need to transfer into the provided wheelchair, as the tribune does not have room for electric wheelchairs. Any spectators in wheelchairs are kindly requested to give this information to the Organizers prior to the performance as the space has to be prepared before the spectators are admitted.
No-one, including representatives of local authorities, technicians, fire inspectors, doormen, ushers etc. may be in the room during the performance, unless they are seated amongst the spectators, and therefore included in the number of 120 seats. Late coming spectators will not be admitted into the room once the performance has begun.
The performance is not suitable for children under the age of 12. It is NOT permitted to take photographs, make film screening documentation and/or sound recordings during the performance. This includes the press representatives.
"THE DEAD BROTHER" - ODIN TEATRET [Dennmark]
- Work Demonstration -
Actress: Julia Varley.
The Dead Brother is a work demonstration about how performances are made at Odin Teatret.
The Dead Brother describes the stages of the work, which starting from a poetic text become a "poem in space": the performance.
It presents the different stages of the process in which text, actor and director interact. It shows the first steps of how the actor creates her own stage presence to the last step in which the text, through the form and precision of the actions, acquires rhythms and density of meaning.
The spectator's energies can then dance, mentally and sensorially. The unrecognised creator in theatre is the spectator.
The Dead Brother is a work demonstration where the miracle of fresh water is explained with a succession of chemical formulas and then presented in the moment in which the elements can no longer be separated and explained, but only experienced.
"TRACES IN THE SNOW" - ODIN TEATRET [Dennmark]
- Work Demonstration -
TRACES IN THE SNOW - an actor's artistic autobiography.
Actress: Roberta Carreri.
Duration: 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Every performance tells a story. The characters belonging to the world of fiction become credible realisty for the spectator thanks to the actor's technique.
In Traces in the snow the technique itself becomes the protagonist. The actress carries on a dialogue with the secrets which precede and follow the building of a character and the creation of a performance - and its process, she exposes these secrets.
The tension which characterizes every drama is also present in this performance/work demonstration, due to the confrontation between the actress's two forms of behavior: daily and scenic.
"AVANT GARDE THEATRE AND THE POLITICS OF APPEARANCE" - JON REFSDAL MOE [Norway]
- Lecture -
Director of Black Box Teater in Oslo will give a lecture titled: Avant garde theatre and the politics of appearance.
Since its break with theatrical realism, avant garde theatre has invested heavily in the concept of appearance. Instead of representing a pre-given, situated reality, avant garde practitioners and theorists have focused on theatre's ability of making something else appear. What is this other to be produced in theatre? How is this other related to the concept of performance, and to the concept of theatrical creation?
This lecture will trace the politics of appearance back to Antonin Artaud's seminal "Le théâtre et son double" and discuss the concept with special focus on Scandinavian artists such as Odin Teatret, Mette Edvardsen and Vegard Vinge.
"THE FLYING CARPET" - ODIN TEATRET [Dennmark]
- Work Demonstration -
Actor: Julia Varley.
Duration: 1 hour.
"Text is a carpet that has to fly far away." With this sentence as a starting point the demonstration works its way through the past thirty years of Odin Teatret performances in which Julia Varley has taken part.
Few essential explanations accompany the vocal work that exemplifies the passage of the word from the written form to space, from coldness of paper to the freedom of interpretation.
PART II - NOVEMBER
"AIR SENSIBLE" - ROB VAN RIJSWIJK & JEROEN STRIJBOS [Holand]
- Concert for duo accordion & live electronics -
"removing the borders between the electronic and acoustic"
With every breath of air, you exchange something with your surroundings. It's the most intimate, direct and immediate way of communication with the world around you. This is the concept Air Sensible is evidently based on. It's a project by composers Rob van Rijswijk and Jeroen Strijbos in cooperation with accordion players Pieternel Berkers and Renée Bekkers (the Toeac duo).
This cooperation is based on the exchange of information and sound material. Air Sensible is a spatial work wherein the electronic sounds are created on the spot through the music played by the accordionists. As in the act of breathing, what is taken in is retained, transformed and then, in a different form, returned; and there are points where the two worlds merge into each other, removing the borders between the electronic and acoustic.
Once again, the accordion proves to be one of the most versatile acoustic instruments. You can make it whisper and scream, shudder, dance and cajole; you can make it breathe with a sigh.
In the right hands - controlled by the right thoughts - an electronic system is an extremely delicate instrument. You can use it to explore what happens around you, record that, manipulate it and then reintroduce it so that the original sound source and the sound produced form asymbiotic relationship - in this way creating a new being. As you can make sounds circulate through a room using electronics, you can similarly make accordions run rings around a centrally positioned audience.
This is what happens in Air Sensible, a spatial musical experience full of contrast, mood variations, to sounds of a fragile beauty, but also with overwhelming power.
"BLACK" - METTE EDVARTSEN [Norway]
- Performance -
If you look a bit around in any theatre, you can be sure to find a black painted chair, a table, a box, a shelf, or even more abstract shapes that have once had a very specific purpose. It is common in theatres to paint objects black in order to make them not be seen, to blend in with the surroundings backstage or as part of the space, or to make them disappear.
'Black' is a solo performance about making things appear. The space is empty. There are no things. Through spoken words and movements in space a world will become visible, where the performer is the mediator between the audience and what is there. It is a play in time and space where only the body is physically present, performing actions and handling invisible objects, constantly trying to bridge the invincible gap between thought and experience, between here and there.
I am not interested in the things in themselves but that we are interested in them. I am interested in how situations leave traces in the memory, and how memory becomes an active part of our reading of something.
[Mette Edvardsen]
The work of Mette Edvardsen is situated within the performing arts field, also exploring other media or other formats such as video and writing. She is living in Brussels since 1996 working as a dancer and performer with Christine de Smedt/Les Ballets C. de la B., Thomas Hauert/ ZOO (B), Lilia Mestre (PT/ B), Bock/ Vincenzi (UK), Marten Spangberg (S), deepblue (N/B), and others. She makes her own work since 2002 presents them internationally and continues to develop projects with other artists.
"NOT EVERY OBJECT USED TO NAIL IS A HAMMER" - GAËTAN BULOURDE [Belgium]
- Performance -
performed by: Gaëtan Bulourde and Olivier Toulemonde.
Artistic activity of Gaëtan Bulourde have its roots in the anti-establishment and anti-formalist ideas of Fluxus, an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for playful and unstrained blending different artistic media and disciplines.
"Not every object used to nail is a hammer" is a piece that is questioning the notion of work through the exploration of sounds produced by nails and hammers.
The presence of the hammer is an echo to the Friedrich Nietzsche's metaphor which appears as the subtitle of "The Twilight of the Idols or How One Philosophizes With Hammer".
The hammer is a tool used for construction, destruction, auscultation, arbitration, fixing, carving, building.
The hammer is a symbol of work, revolution, strength, authority, rebellion, power, aphorism.
With a hammer in the hand you are at work.
This performance is thus questionning the notion of activity through exploration of the involvement of the body at work.
We are presently working, we are producing.
"Not every object used to nail is a hammer" is a quotation of Erwin Goffman, an American sociologist who analysed the theatre and developed the following theory: during a theatre presentation, performers are working by producing the piece they show, and spectators are also working by producing meanings to this performance.
Gaëtan Bulourde and Olivier Toulemonde by means of a hammer, three nails and a board, attempt to create works that - as a performance - becomes a work itself. The sounds produced by their activity on stage could be compared to concrete music as defined by John Cage's aphorism: "when I want to listen to music, I open up the window".
Robert Filliou (a French artist, member of Fluxus group) used to claim himself as an artist which is "good for nothing" because he didn't want to consider artist as an expert in his narrow field. Following his philosophy an artist should be "good for nothing" in order to be good in everything.
Gaëtan Bulourde lives and works in Brussels. He studied mathematics and classical guitar. In the 90's he played bass guitar in different rock bands until a choreographer saw him dancing in a party and invited him to take part in her dance piece. Since then, he has collaborated as a dancer and/or performer in different projects with Meg Stuart ("Replacement janvier 2006") and Xavier Le Roy ("Das Theater der Wiederholungen (steirischer herbst 2003), "e.x.t.e.n.t.i.o.n.s.") among others. Since 1998, he has been developing his own projects, e.g. "Pfuuf ou le bout de la langue" (2004) and "TV News Hasselt" (2006).
Olivier Toulemonde lives and works in Berlin. In 1993, he was a co-founder of "Collectif Ishtar" joined the "Collectif et Compagnie". He plays improvised music with acoustic objects or amplified springs. He works on listening, sound research and the relationship between sound and space. Besides Bulourde, he has collaborated with N. Desmarchelier, M. Doneda, C. Sehnaoui, M. Forge, A. Palier, J. Wright.
His latest works are "The Sound Metallurgy Trade Union" with A. Paquotte (2009), "Seismograph" (2008), "Empty Factory" (2008), furthermore the Radiophonic pieces: "Mosquito" (2009). Toulemonde has been also responsible for around fifteen soundtracks for Muriel Toulemonde's video works, which have been exhibited internationally. His latest release was 2010 "Crickxstraat" (with Agnes Palier / FFHHH records)
"ENTERTAINMENT ISLAND 1, 2, 3 -THE TRILOGY" - OBLIVIA [FINLAND]
- Performances -
Entertainment Island is a project on popular culture and entertainment by the performance company Oblivia. Oblivia drills through the vast world of entertainment and popular culture, from the shiny surface to the murky and private regions underneath. The trilogy is shown as a full evening length work.
Entertainment Island 1 is an energetic take on the structures of the entertainment industry (premiered in 2008 at Kiasma Theatre). An array of gestures, movements and sounds emanating from the entertainment industry are presented in this energetic performance unveiling the mechanisms of popular culture.
Entertainment Island 2 is a hilarious take on life style where local culture meets global (premiered November 2009 at Kiasma Theatre).
Entertainment Island 3 deals with private entertainment through perversions and cartoon figures in a minimalist manner that is characteristic for Oblivia (premiered at Kiasma Theatre 2010).
We spent weeks doing funny walks and telling bad jokes while pulling out false limbs and making funny faces. The pretend stuttering was the final straw. We were stuck and not the least funny. We had to face what we knew from the start: we are not entertainers. We do not deal in entertainment. We deal in structures. We changed track. We proceeded jumping up and down shouting Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! We had finally arrived at the core of popular culture.
[Oblivia]
OBLIVIA
Founded in 2000 in Helsinki, the international performance company Oblivia is a unique force on the Finnish performance scene. Oblivias collectively devised, interdisciplinary and minimalist performances merge the boundaries of art forms and nationalities.
The background of Oblivia's members from Finland and UK are in music, dance and theory. This mixture of backgrounds and nationalities creates a vibrant and special tension and humour in the work. From the beginning the core members have been working together creating a common performance language. Guest collaborators are invited to partake in individual projects. Oblivia is part of the Produforum network based at Korjaamo in Helsinki. Kiasma Theatre has produced Oblivia's work since 2007 and has hosted the Entertainment Island project.
ENTERTAINMENT ISLAND 1,2,3 - THE TRILOGY
Performed and devised by: Timo Fredriksson, Anna Krzystek, Annika Tudeer
Lights: Meri Ekola
Sound: Juuso Voltti
Photographs: Eija Mäkivuoti
Co-production: Kiasma Theatre
Support: CCA Centre for Contemporary Art, PACT Zollverein, Produforum, Svenska kulturfonden, Arts Council Finland, Arts Council Helsinki, Sparbankstiftelsen, KKNord.
PHOTO EXHIBITION
LOCATION: Kana's Cellar
Theatre Meetings OKNO are accompanied by photo exhibition connected with art work of Oblivia. Photos relates to different photographic genres capturing iconic images of pop culture and are made by Eija Mäkivuoti.
