Musical - o ne of the modern genres, along with which a number of generations grew up not o nly in America, but also in Europe. The genre, which wished to speak in the language of time, of the people - today, People from the street, People from life... The genre, which "took down" the great classical myths and themes, heroes and characters and made them up to today - alive... Julia, the Julia of Shakespeare came down from her high romantic balkony in Verona and came o n the streets of an American neighbourhood, and Romeo left his highly poetical love songs behind and took a knife. To stand up for his love. In musical, drama became particular, sharp, fleshy... We started feeling it - with our skin, with our bodies, with our intestine. We started speaking without words, we stopped speaking, we started dancing, we started singing. We started making the heroes' fate happen, but also our own fate, with our whole being. All that Broadway, Broadway.
Jesus Christ Superstar – God was never a child, that is why he created Jesus - to experience his own childhood. West Side Story - With the unforgetable hit "America"; Columbus was actually looking for the rich India, but not the poor America. All that America! The Cat`s – The unforgetable "Macavity", "Grizabella" and "Midnight" Chicago – What is Chicago without its (bordei???) and its "Mamma", without its murders, without the glorious murderesses - who murdered their men in ecstasy. In fact, the own husband can be loved o nly as a corpse. In Chicago however corpses also sing - like the o ne of the great Billy. Cabaret – To the timeless Lisa Minelli. The heart stops, the breath freezes, but the mouth sings. And how it sings! All, that jazz – Everything has an end - love too, sex too, and glory - “ Bye, bye happiness” Hair – When we hear thim rhythm, we start hearing the beats of our hearts, the speed of our blood, the cry of our body, the yell of our all being - our hairs go up and turn into antennas, which catch the sun “ Let the sunshine in..” Energy, energy, energy... We are a kernel of energy, which is just before explosion, which explodes - in a mad show, in an unseen fiesta, a spiritual "duende" under the stars, which are so big tonight, as if each of them wants to become Moon. The Moon o n Broadway...
No curtain. No script. No audience. Only you. Yes, you, who is reading this text, exactly you. It isn’t a mistake. It isn’t an accident. It’s only an attempt at happening… Of Me and You… If you come as You are, for us to be together in ding. Whatever that means.
In Fire, Wind and Butterfly there is no fire, no wind, no butterfly. There are only pieces of memories about the miniature space between two fire flames, between the translucent tongues of wind, between the velvet dreams of gold in the House of the Butterfly King. This space is running into the wild time of ghost plants, with no width, depth and height, it is inhabited by solemn, limpid-of-glass-and-sand persons, whom no one ever met, persons who still keep alive the language-of-biting-and- scratching, persons who are as fragile as a mood in the afternoon. There is no Silence in this solemnity but the broken Silence, which also resembles the noise crushing her in every moment. And between the hands roaming in sight and the inner hands digging more and more tangible inside the spectator, there is only one difference: the inner hands do not forget that they are unable to tell l-l-lies. Fire, Wind and Butterfly is the official washing of the hands in a bowl full of cat fur, under the accompaniment of a saxophone, after you have surprisingly been attacked while walking out of home, by a large black salamander who has longed for your destruction.
Two, two, twelve, I’ll kiss her mouth.
Her mouth –made of silver. I have to shoot her!!
Follow me, girl! Join me in my straw house. We do not have corn tortillas. No corn tortillas! But follow me, girl, follow me ... One endless journey under the open sky. Journey that confronts us with our own internal need to meet "The Other." He is often given qualities that are felt as missing, excluded, repressed. They – the Gypsies are example of "the internal other." Their appearance reminds us of a picturesque alternative to the pressure of our predominantly urban and industrial lifestyle. A journey in which the boundaries of "the self" decay, the soul strips completely and unfolds in its shamelessness and beauty. Gypsies are not used to pouring out their emotions in aesthetic waterfalls of empty words, but they do know how to appreciate beauty in all its forms. A journey into another world, shrouded in mystery, to be able to continue at the same time - to remain different. One journey, after which it remains unclear if the pleasure from it can offset the pain of the separation. But one thing is certain: Do not camp by lake If lake is home of crocodiles.
A stud of wild horses, chased by people. Up in the mountain. Protecting its freedom. Making sense of it. A lump of sugar for good behaviour or feeling your skin, your whole body breathe freely. What could be more inflaming than a body in the peak of its striving to achieve freedom, to break the chains of physical constraint and to defend its original right to be free - like the wind, the heaven, the moon, the grass. To feel the "Greenwild" of the green and to melt into it...
The peak is beneath their feet. Nowhere to run. Each has to make a choice - there, alive but dependent, or here - free but doomed. They choose for freedom, they choose for death. Happy and believing - that they would meet their God free...
The play is in the stylistics of "dance theatre', of physical theatre. Accepting its challenges, the troupe walks towards its higher aim - the synthetic, syncretic, interactive theatre. the alive theatre - in which there is not just words, just a sound, just a gesture. But a word-sound, a sound-gesture, a gesture-word, a word-sound-gesture, i.e. feelings, excitement, impulses... And a lot of beauty. Inner beauty.
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"Shakespeare - contemporary and cruel" - this is what the most eminent English playwright is to his most contemporary and most cruel interpreter - professor Jan Kott. And if he succeeds in stripping all the other Shakespearean heroes out of their skin and showing us their meat - naked, their blood - running, now in "Hamlet" his surgical intervention is even more cardinal.
Trepanation opens the notorious Shakespearean skull and denudes Hamlet's brain and we see this, I would like to call it, chaos of thoughts, "Tempest" of thoughts which has been raging for centuries.
Jan Kott does not exhibit the question "What is Hamlet", but "How you become Hamlet", "What is the Hamlet thing in Hamlet?", "What is that which makes hamlets from ones and non-hamlets from others?" and in an exceptionally vivid and readable scenic reading.
"Three Boys and One Girl" is the cruel line by Shakespeare formulated by Jan Kott and thrown as a glove in the face of our cruel "today", cruel scenic vision of the murder not of Hamlet but of "the Hamlet gene" - so that he disappears forever and never torments the human mankind again.
How close we are to the Holy Scripture and to the story about Christ and king Irod.
Only the names are different...
We have been working on texts by William Shakespeare in interpretation of one of the most notable contemporary Shakespearian scholars - Professor Ian Kot. In the play “I, Lady Macbeth”, based on the bloodiest of all Shakespearian tragedies, we trust in his concept: “don’t let the historians write that Macbeth is a tragedy of ambition or a tragedy of fear for that is simply not true. One must simplify the story to its most basic formula – murder. People who kill and people who are killed, and whether it is day or night simply does not matter. The Night itself doesn’t know whether it is night or already day.” The only character of significance in the entire play is Lady Macbeth. Everyone else, including Macbeth, is just a name from a list of participants. “Nature has denied me, that, which it had previously given me – being a lover and a mother. She left me to my own devices. And I accepted my self. I liked myself. I fell in love with myself. And now I am myself. I can do everything, because everything is a part of me. And I want everything, from everyone. And when I achieve all that – to be above everyone, it will be me, only me – Lady Macbeth. Except what doesn’t exist, nothing else exists.
In the outskirts of supper . Just the outskirts. One has to go through the outskirts so as to get to the supper. Under the vigilant supervision of “The Blind, Herself”. Her eyes are unzipped. The eyes – two dead coins minted in law and truth. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt Us, Us, The Blind. Because we cannot tell the difference between paper and scissors – the former doesn’t stay whole, and the latter splits into two. Indifference doesn’t bring any pleasure – it’s just that someone asks you about someone else – do you know her? No, I don’t know her – she is my sister. Somewhere soap is being sold and people carry on, only the boots leak carefully, suitcase by suitcase, coach by coach, drop by drop – swallow, but only backwards. Two Marries. Marry and Marry. Their double body, their double clothes, their double veil – they do not know what it is like to grow up and be ready to get married… If a man should die, he should die in a hotel room, because everything about hotel rooms is temporary… In between welcome and goodbye they keep silent slower and slower.
Not undressed, not bared, but naked. Naked from the inside. Not to look at it, but to see it. In the dark. Without light, which would make it visible. To look straight into it, inside of it. Naked and real. With blood drops. If you look at it this way, you’ll begin to hear it. Listening to it, you’ll be able to see it, to dream it. To dream yourself, your war, your personal war.
The performance is based on our personal World War II, about which we have only memories, feelings, joy and pain.
We talk in Albanian, Romanian, English, Bosnian, Spanish, Italian and Bulgarian, which have no significance at all, because the meaning is above the speech, above the word; the meaning is in the feeling, in the happening.
She is insane, a lunatic. Insane in a lunatic way. Stretching her hands and hanging on the moon. She is swinging on the moon. Sleeping on the moon. Sleeping with the moon.
Scarlet red - peace. Peace is crumbling, peace is swarming, scattering.
The water. I don't know it. It scares me. I prefer dreaming in white.
Ofa, allow me to be your Shakespeare, you would be able to drown me.
I love to observe myself. Only to observe myself. Alone. A fiery dress, beneath it - the body - like a leech. The lipstick, so scarlet, so sinful, as though the lips are falling apart.
I alternate words - colors: white in the dream, red on the lips. White, red, white, red…
Cloths and lips, cloths and lips and so until I'm left without them.
I'll come one day to see you. Say: I saw you. And I'll go. If you let me. Why not let me? Without lips, what would you need me for?
I'll caress myself. Why not caress myself? When there is noone else to caress me. And I will saturate with colors. I'm getting confused. I don't see anything. I feel. I feel my palms on my thighs. I press them. Strongly. Stronger. I guess this is art. Pressure makes art.
Would you allow me to set myself on fire in front of you? This disgusts you? It would smell bad? But it will hurt. It doesn't do to mix conscience with pain. As well as conscience with straw. Because straw is good for the ox, who ruminates it, but conscience is not.
This is not a toilet... No, no, no, this is not a toilet.
Once – in the childhood, once – through the childhood, once – from the bottom of the perfect moon we set out “towards” the sky, “in” the sky, “through” the sky, “above” the sky, “under” the sky… We go on and gradually forget that nothing is as infinite as that thing “inside” of us. And like the birds up in the air we draw all the methods, which we know about flying… And having believed that we’re close to infinity, we dream about our awakening… In the sea. Like fish.
While someone else completely down to earth, reads the cookery books and tenaciously searches for the cherished sea delicacy, having forgotten its name, but perfectly remembering its taste…
The violins in contrast to the violinists, do not drown – they float in their cases. And grieve – for their violinists.
WHAT’S SEEN TO BE HEARD – WHAT’S HEARD TO BE SEEN
The human being is the only one who can settle and solve his human problems. In contrast to the plants and animals, man has the chance to be what he has decided to be. His existence is in the sense of his self-establishing. He is given a possibility to leave his own limits. He performs a leap – to the divine, to the cosmos – the one outside his own inside of him - to the world, to himself, to freedom. Thus he overgrows himself, untwining the orb of his possibilities. There’s no human being without a world, there’s no me without the others. The power of a man as an example for his own development and the development of others. That’s the message. To rise up to the top of your possibilities and with the rope of your experience to give a chance for the others to reach their own peak. Because only those achieved peaks are the way to the eternal striving of a man to the dreamt world, to the upper world, to the world of art – where we, the human beings, are that, what we want to be and can be. The movement of this performance, that runs away from the narrative field and aspires to run, to jump and fall into the field of the suggestive, of the spontaneous, of the particular emotions and happenings, free from circumstances, only capable of lighting up the “darkness” of our sub consciousness and to fill it with the “light” of our Spirit. The spectator’s eye travels impetuously and long to reach as much as it can deeper into the personal in the face of the actors, to the essence of their human beings. To the magic of meeting between people. Those, who create the world of art and those, who feel the need of that world. No matter if they realize or not this need. The music, this initial sound “speech”, with which we’re gifted by nature, is implacable. And unconquerable. Because it’s inside every one of us. The dynamic constructive feeling wouldn’t let the performance to remain in the captivity of the “cultural” – even with the price of crossing its boundaries. It’ll work with the limits, in the limits, to reach the vitality needed. Leap and flight. The “seizure” has to ensure the sympathy of the spectator, not the logic of his erudition. Not his preparedness or unpreparedness. How? When this, what we see is heard and that, what we hear is seen.
Experimental zone White square on the white background
I am trying to define her, I’m constantly trying. Pitiful attempts ending with washed away image of a demon in little-girl tiny body. And all that aptitude for insolent behavior…this child’s wrist.. Combination of frankness and craftiness, grace and vulgarity, gloominess and childish enthusiasm that this unimaginable cub has, drives me insane slowly and painful. She was holding me in enchanting captivity. Her little wrists stick tightly as fairy vampire to the surface of my rough skin. I am not a criminal sexual psychopath, I am aesthete, who is enjoying and straight helping to raise this little child plant requiring special needs. She came into my purple-black land conducting by incautious curiosity, looking around and smiling so cute. Sometimes interweaving of our soul with animal is exaggerated... Profile of a child-pedophile: erotic happening with criminal shades. Key word – sexuality. Whose? Who? What? The answer - borderline. Are there any limits in such
The performance is created to the occasion of the eminent 100 anniversary of presentment of the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Marie Sklodowska Curie. It is dedicated to the discoverers – Pierre and Marie Curie, whose exceptional vocation in science gave humanity knowledge of fundamental meaning. Science and creativity in this case go hand by hand. The performance is a laboratory. We will turn chemistry into theatre, theatre into chemistry and the opposite. And then – from the beginning. The world doesn’t penetrate here, neither the sun. We have our own sun, which glimmers, shines, gives warmth… And bites. We have our own moon, which fills, rises up and leaks.
Since some causes provoke some consequences, then the elements of symmetry of causes must be examined for the provoked consequences. If certain consequences provoke certain asymmetries – then those asymmetries must be examined for in the causes, which have provoked those consequences. This principle can’t be turned around – at least in practice. This means that the consequences can be much more symmetrical than the causes.
What is the line between normal and abnormal? What is the line between real and unreal? Between desirable and existent? Between physical and spiritual? It is a very funny game, a painfully sad game, a cruel game – a warning and enlightenment about the scary things that could happen to all of us.
Some people laugh, other people cry, the rest - vomit.
But we all got the statute normal.
The thread of life is being twisted by every woman. Out of concern every other measures it with eyes, while every third, wanting to recognize the guilt, ceaselessly cuts it to pieces and says to the others: please, from the start, so that it remains apart. The woman – the eternal sinner (Magna Pecatrix), passing through different faces - Snake in the bosom, Unblemished conception, Monster and genius, A bone of contention, Pandora’s box, Stew-prose, La Gioconda, Madonna, Gorgon, Cocotte, The ninth soul of the cat, Cleopatra, Cobra, Penelope, Noah’s ark through the flood, Didone abbandonata, Apasionata, The Moonlight sonata, Fleeting phantasm, Sex, The tamed fox of Saint Ex, Phryne, Messalina, “Two beautiful eyes”, those of Mina, Leech, Piaf, Marilyn Monroe, A cradle song, Requiem, The star of Bethlehem, A jewel for one su, Of Paul Verlaine, The milk of the Milky Way, The Creation, Judgement’s day – structures the emptiness, so that it doesn’t look that empty and instead of the awaited gratitude from the opposite sex, she gets incomprehension and condemnation. Why? Because the man’s heart can’t take hold of all those things. What is left for her? To accept her fate as Eternal sinner and like a spider to walk through the emptiness, leaving behind her traces from the missed moments, which humbly await their happening.
The form: lined. Parallel. Every line goes alone for itself, realizing its parallel impossibility to reach the other lines and to unite with them in one new wholeness.
Two boys are running along and carrying your lavatory pan. Is it normal? Normal. If you need it - you stop, put it down, sit on it. And ease nature. But what if you do not need it? And you use it not to ease nature but to philosophize over the human being and human fate?...
Even here, at your own lavatory pan they don't leave you in peace. Again and again this girl comes asking you if you're not the sea. The sea had been her lover.
"Where do you live? In myself. Is there anyone there? It's crowded. And everyone screams: I am you, I am you..."; "I am disgusted. By what? By the fact that it's raining, for example. But it's not raining anymore? Then by the fact that it's not raining"; "Think as me, if not - you're either evil or insidious. You're a frog..."; "So far, so good - you'd say, as the guy falling from the 12th floor said when reaching the 8th..."; "In the desert I saw a creature - it was nibbling its heart with rage. I asked it: Is it tasty? It is bitter - but it is mine"; "The delightful is only a part of the dreadful which we can bear"; "The drama of communication? - Its impossibility"
Two girls with a provocative behavior, faking pregnancy. Is it normal? Normal? This gives them the freedom to be what they are not. To act on behalf of someone else. To do everything they have ever wanted but have not been able to. To strip naked their lives to their impossible nudity. And to see it for the first time as it is - "impossible". And where to now: "We would be insane if we keep wanting to give birth. But if we do not give birth then we are normal. And if we are normal we have to want to give birth". And in order to defend their "impossibility" they do this - give birth. To what? To rabbits, two rabbits: white and black. Like their lives. They leave the rabbits and depart from the stage - leaving problems and dilemmas to us, the audience... Because noone can be in charge of our own lives instead of us.
Absurd or simply real. As in life. Or as in our dreams - where there is no borderline between schizophrenic and normal. It should be funny but it's not... The smile freezes on the lips. The constant struggle between comic and tragic turns the play into a grotesque. Don't be afraid - the grotesque is a tragic comedy. Even when they ask you in the end "Where have you been?" don't answer that you have not been because they are asking you exactly this: "Why haven't you been?"... There where... Humanity is crying out of delight!
Two girls with a provocative behaviour, faking pregnancy. This gives them the freedom to be what they are not. To act on the behalf of someone else. To do everything they have ever wanted but have not been able to. To strip naked their lives to their impossible nudity. And to see it for the first time as it is - "impossible". And where to now: "We would be insane if we keep wanting to give birth. But if we do not give birth then we are normal. And if we are normal we have to want to give birth". And in order to defend their "impossibility" they do this - give birth. To what? To rabbits, two rabbits: white and black. Like their lives. They leave the rabbits and depart from the stage - leaving problems and dilemmas to us, the audience... Because no one can be in charge of our own lives instead of us.
The performance is from the "cabaret" category. And namely a club cabaret - played and improvised with the audience.
Lots of interactions, lots of "impossibilities", lots of laughter, lots of music, lots of dance.
The performance is a torn cry: “I am not this, what you know about me. The conflict between the Ego of a certain individuality and the surrounding ones, those, whom we call society and who do not want to accept the individual otherness, the true inner identity of personality, which has its own authentic soul space, wherein our inner person lives.
The themes: A person started off barefooted ; We do not believe anymore in heroes – nor ours, neither others’; The sunflowers fell down in dust; A stretched-out hopelessness; Cry, my poor cry; Eyes, glassy of fear; Life is out there – where there; The first flowers and the wonder of the first “yes”; Expressionistic calendar; All for all – noone for noone; Vomit us, vomit again; Because the world is a terrible masquerade, drunk carnival procession; Masks, masks of humans, of people; Miserere Domine…
All this in the stylistics of the physical theatre. With the expression means of body, with the language of body. A drill, a deep drill in the human-thing in us, in our sub-consciousness – there, where our personality is being born and dies, our inner person, our god-human…
“Homeland – wonderful, but… What is homeland? My homeland is there where my happiness is.”
"Voice", "words", "talking", "mouth", "ear", "eye", "idleness", "timelessness", "things", "names", "silence", "waiting"… that has nothing to do with the expectation, that is hope. "Waiting" is just waiting. "Waiting for Godot", i.e. for the non-existing. Because it doesn't exist. It absurdly doesn't exist. This is the dramaturgy of this performance.
We have clarified nothing, have explained nothing, have changed nothing, have added nothing, have attached nothing from us, the researchers. However we haven't made anything easier for you, the witnesses of our journey, and haven’t saved you anything.
This performance is dedicated to these important historical dates:
4th of July 1989 – “The Polish round table”, which initiated the thrilling performance – “Poland nowadays”.
1939 – The beginning of World War II
9th of November 1989 – The fall of the Berlin Wall
The realization of this thrilling and hot topic has its roots in the play by the famous Polish playwright Leon Kruchkowski – “The first day of liberty”. Although we are going to rely on history and historical memory, at the same time, we are going to work with these people, here and now. We are going to work with these young people, who are not so aware of the facts and who are distant from the historical memory of the generations before them. But who are also aware of the reasons, which caused the suffering of these generations.
Wars do not come by themselves. They are a result of the walls inside of us. But which walls? The ones like the Berlin Wall or the Chinese Wall? The ones that are harmless or the ones that are terrifying? The ones that are terrifying or the ones that are most terrifying? The walls, which we build inside ourselves and we hide behind them, we hide ourselves, without letting others to get to know us, to see us for who we really are, to feel close, touched and understood. Instead of that we nurture our fears, we evolve them; and what is more important – we manipulate ourselves and other people with them. We claim that this is not our world, but at the same time we do not do anything to make it ours.
The message: Which liberty? After the fall of which wall? After the end of which war? Does it matter? Is there any difference? Do they kill us differently? Do they take away from us differently – what our mothers and our God give us – our life? Life comes into this world through life. But in killing life what shall we be born from? What from? From cans labeled: “human meat”. Let us not forget the pain sung. It’s such a strange world, where a man kills a man. Yes, very, very strange. Hurts and bleeds. |