Also there was this opera...

AN INCITATION FOR CAPETONIAN THEATRE PRACTITIONERS FOR 2013: AN OPINION i.e. take it or leave it

It's a new year.

I haven't blogged since 2012.

Amongst my resolutions are to write more and to own my opinions.

This is a step in that direction.

DISCLAIMER:

I understand and appreciate what a difficult, and often thankless, task it is to make theatre in this country. The hours are long, the pay is terrible and to top it all off, there is a significant chance that you’ll play to a house of five or six die-hard theatre fans (probably your mom, dad, gran, lover and a lone Fleur du Cap judge, if you’re lucky). I therefore have a huge deal of respect for any individual who names theatre as their profession. But just because I admire that you do what you do, doesn’t mean that I have to like how you go about it. Nor does it mean you should stop. I reiterate my subtitle: this is an opinion. My opinion.

Please note that by and large, I have not entered into an analysis of the financial implications of my opinion. I am writing specifically about the annual Maynardville outdoor Shakespeare production and I am going on the assumption that it possesses secure funding and will continue in some way, shape or form every year. If this assumption is false, please correct me.

In fact, if you are in any way moved by what I have to say, I invite you to express it.

ON TO THE JUICY BIT:

Last Thursday evening I braved the wind to watch a preview of Maynardville’s most recent Shakespeare, Cardenio. (If Cardenio is, indeed, a Shakespeare text. The the origin of text debate is not one I am interested in entering into nor, for the purposes of this article, is it necessary.)

After the show, as always, my companion (a fellow young theatre-maker-ess) and I sat down to a cup of tea and a discussion of what we had just encountered. Our analysis? On the whole we liked it. The story is entertaining, some performances are notable, the costumes are pretty and the boys of the cast even prettier. In summation, Cardenio is one of the more decent Maynardville offerings in recent years.

And yet, for me, the production is an unsatisfactory one.

The reason? Although it is arguable that all the theatrical elements come together to form a cohesive whole, a week later, I am not sure what the whole is. Why was I watching the piece? What is it that is being conveyed to the audience? In terms of concept and analysis Cardenio, along with almost every Maynardville production I have ever watched and I would go as far as to say most (but not all) professional re-workings of existing texts in Cape Town in recent years, presents little more than a high school production of a Shakespearian text does. The use of metaphor is either non-existent or not realised. Cardenio shows us what the text is already telling us i.e. when an actor makes a reference to sex, they usually thrust their pelvis and/or gestures towards their genitalia so that we understand that we're currently experiencing a sex joke. This is not to say that people are not doing their jobs. Text analysis and a creative process are evident. My problem with Cardenio specifically is that there seems to be a lack overall vision from the director and so what is conveyed is murky at best.

On a platform such the annual Maynardville outdoor production, I don't think that's good enough. 

I think it's time that we started making more intelligent and provoking work. Many would argue that it is not the function and aim of Maynardville to do what I am suggesting should be done. There is this statement to consider: the audiences are not ready.

I remember presenting a similar argument when discussing with a peer GIPCA’s Live Art Festival of 2012. We were debating why the majority of works were of a poor quality and/or not ‘live art’ per say. As the fateful words tumbled out of my mouth, said peer looked at me as if I’d fallen out of a tree and hit my head very hard. He simply replied, “They’re begging for it.” Upon reflection, I realised why I had said what I did. "The audiences are not ready" is a euphemism. When I said, "the audiences are not ready" what I really meant was, "I am not ready. I am scared. I do not know how to move forward and solve the problems. I am not really sure how to do what is required of me."

Furthermore, I believe we vastly underestimate the intelligence and capability of our audiences. As evidence I offer these pictures of Benedict Andrew's 2011 production of King Lear at The National Theatre of Iceland.

 

As the pictures illustrate, Andrews presents a barren and exposed stage, stripped of curtains, backdrops, wings etc. The play opens with Lear's court seated in a forest of helium-filled balloons. The image is easy to understand: in this place, something is about to burst. A heavy and hot rain pours down onto the stage for the next hour. The balloons burst, the action unfolds. Andrews uses simple visual (and sonic) metaphor to convey concept and context. He illustrates the collapse and disintegration of man and a society within the play, which refracts into a contemporary context; the economic crisis in Iceland.

Benedict Andrews gives the text a vision. He is creating a contemporary theatre language.

A large portion of Maynardville's audiences are school children and I do not think it is beyond  the average fourteen year-old, let alone adult, to understand the use metaphor described above. Using metaphor in this way will transcend the archaic (albeit beautiful) language that often hinders comprehension of Shakespeare and other such texts. And if I am wrong and if it is beyond the average individual to understand, presenting works in this way is essential to developing analytical skills.

Of course, it must be taken into consideration that Andrews' circumstances are different. He has a bigger budget, for a start. Capetonian theatres are not yet equipped to support an hour-long rainstorm onstage. But they don't need to be. The point is that the way we think about theatre  and how we make it is aching for a shift and that the shift is possible. I need only refer to Guy de Lancey's 2011 and 2012 productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and King Lear at the Intimate Theatre or Christiaan Olwagen's Politik trilogy to illustrate that.

This is a written challenge to my peers, the theatre institutions of the Cape and to myself. Cue rousing music and inspirational voice (in my head, that’s the forever-chocolate that pours from Liz Mills’s mouth but you may prefer James Earl Jones or Adrian Galley or Siri):

Let's, as a collective of theatre practitioners, work towards more considered and better realised visions.

Let’s not undermine or underestimate ourselves or our audiences.

Let’s conquer our fear of the unknown.

Let’s break some rules.

Let’s make some new shit.

(And if you don’t want to. I can’t make you.)

GRADUATING SOON!!!

It's exactly one month until my final practical exam of my undergraduate career.

Check out my concept-book-as-blog for The School (yes, that's it's name).

It's live here.

My classmates are putting on a little play

One of this year's senior productions Tennessee Williams' seminal A Streetcar Named Desire. It is directed by Luke Ellenbogen and it stars my amazing friends and classmates in both major and character roles. 
Very excited to see!!!!!
Review to follow shortly.

Young Jean Lee

Speaking about manifesto's, this is Young Jean Lee's:

Artistic Statement

When starting a play, I ask myself, "What's the last show in the world I would ever want to make?" Then I force myself to make it. I do this because going out of my comfort zone compels me to challenge my assumptions and find value in unexpected places. I write my shows as I’m directing them, working collaboratively with my performers and artistic team and getting feedback from workshop audiences. Our goal is to find ways to get past our audiences’ defenses against uncomfortable subjects and open people up to confronting difficult questions by keeping them disoriented and laughing. My work is about struggling to achieve something in the face of failure and incompetence and not-knowing. The discomfort and discovery involved in watching this struggle reflects the truth of my experience.

-Young Jean Lee

This woman is a boss.

 

Check her out at http://www.youngjeanlee.org/content/home

Abramovic the new Stanislavski?

Marina Abramović returns to Milan with a new work conceived for the
PAC Contemporary Art Pavilion

The PAC in Milan is the venue chosen by Marina Abramović to host her eagerly awaited new body of work, entitled The Abramović Method. This is the first major museum exhibition premiering new works since her groundbreaking retrospective in 2010 at the MoMA, New York.  The Abramović Method will be on view at the PAC from March 21 through June 10, 2012.
Promoted by the Milan Department of Culture, Fashion and Design and jointly produced by the PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea and 24 ORE Cultura–Gruppo 24 ORE, the event is curated by Diego Sileo and Eugenio Viola.
Marina Abramović is one of the most fascinating and magnetic figures of our time whose artistic trajectory is linked to the very history of performance art. A pioneer of this performance art since the 1970s and the winner of the Golden Lion award at the 1997 Venice Bienniale, she has often gone beyond her physical and psychological limits, endangered her personal safety, shattered frameworks and conventions, and probed deeply into her own fears and those of her spectators, bringing art into contact with physical and emotional experience, and connecting it with life itself.
The Abramović Method was born from the artist’s reflections on three major performances from the last decade: The House With the Ocean View (2002), Seven Easy Pieces (2005) and The Artist is Present (2010).  These performances left a deep imprint on Abramović’s perception of her work in relation to the public.
“In my experience, as developed in a career of over 40 years, I have arrived at the conclusion that the public plays a very important and indeed crucial role in performance,” she explains. “The performance has no meaning without the public because, as Duchamp said, it is the public that completes the work of art. In the case of performance, I would say that public and performer are not only complementary but almost inseparable.”
It will thus be the public, guided and prompted by the artist, that experiences her “interactive installations” in The Abramović Method with the support of Rottapharm|Madaus. These works, which combine furniture with embedded minerals, allow for the public to interact with them though standing, sitting or lying down on the sculptures. Thes objects present a physical and mental pathway that transforms the spaces of the PAC into an experience made up of darkness and light, absence and presence, and altered perceptions of space and time. Through this pathway, people are offered the chance to expand their senses, to observe, and to learn to listen, both to others and to themselves.
In order to emphasize the dichotomies of observer and observed, actor and spectator, Marina Abramović has install a series of telescopes within the exhibition, by AURIGA, for visitors to look at the macro and micro point of views of those who decide to tackle the interactive installations.
This is the “Abramović Method” through which the artist trained herself, a process that reached its peak in the performance The Artist is Present at the MoMA (2010), in which she performed daily during public hours for duration of the exhibition. For this, her longest solo piece to date, she sat in silence at a table, inviting visitors to take the seat across from her for as long as they chose within the timeframe of the museum’s hours of operation. Interacting solely through eye contact, the involvement of the vistors completed the perfomace and allowed for the participants to have a personal experience with the artist and the piece itself. A monumental installation, on view for the first time in Italy, will re-visit this memorable performance, setting the stage for their exploration of The Abramović Method.
The Abramović Method is born out of awareness that the act of performance is capable of bringing about a radical transformation both in the performer and in the public. In an age when time is truly precious but also truly rare, Marina Abramović calls upon the actors and spectators to stop and experience the present moment.
Visitors will be helped to attain a deeper understanding of the Abramović method by a selection of previous works, which will be on view in the exhibition. From Dozing Consciousness (1997) to Homage to Saint Therese (2009), her works are based on the same principles and the same untiring pursuit of an “energetic” expansion of perception, capable of combining age-old wisdom and traditions with contemporary reality.
This exhibition is will also present excerpts from “MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ – THE ARTIST IS PRESENT” directed by Matthew Akers, produced by Show of Force for HBO in co-production with AVRO Television and in collaboration with GA&A Productions and distributed in Italy by GA&A Productions and Feltrinelli Real Cinema.  Concurrent with the opening of the exhibition at the PAC, an Italian preview of the film in its entirety will be presented in Milan on March 22.  The film has garnered critical praise in the festival circut and won The Berlin International Film Festival’s Public Award in February 2012.
The Abramović Method will also be the subject of a documentary film directed by Giada Colagrande with the support of Fondazione Furla. “We’re happy to contribute to the achievement this project,” says Giovanna Furlanetto, the foundation president, “because we’re very bound with Marina, an exstraordinary artist that was patroness of the 7th edition of the Furla Awards, and we really appreciate Giada Colagrande’s sensibility.”
The catalogue, edited by the exhibition’s curators Diego Sileo and Eugenio Viola, will be published by 24 ORE Cultura–Gruppo 24 ORE with texts by the two curators as well as texts by Renato Barilli, Achille Bonito Oliva, Germano Celant, Gillo Dorfles, Antonello Tolve, Angela Vettese and Neville Wakefield.
The catalogue will be published in two volumes. The first, Italian Works, will feature all of the performances staged in Italy by Marina Abramović. Created at different stages in her 40-year career, the publication documents her special relationship with Italy, which has hosted some of her most significant performances. Among other, the book includes Rhythm 10 (1973) in Rome; Rhythm 4 (1974) in Milan; to dangerous Rhythm 0 (1974) in Naples; Imponderabilia (1977) in Bologna; Balkan Baroque (1997), winner of the Venice Bienniale Golden Lion award; at Mambo at Marienbad (2001) in Volterra; and so many others. The second volume will focus exclusively on the process leading up to The Abramović Method and will include docuemention of the various phase of preperation, from the staging of the exhibtion to the direct experience of participants in this unique method of creating performance art.

Accessed at http://theabramovicmethod.it/it/english/

Meet me in Buenos Aires and take me to the theatre

Looking forward to...

As I enter the fourth and final year of my theatre and performance degree *author shivers inwardly at prospect of no longer being a student*, I am increasingly struck by how little the divisons we create in art actually mean. (i.e. the need to separate fine art from conceptual art, performance, dance, music, film). With this in mind, I have resolved to spend more time not only in theatres and cinemas, but at galleries, gigs, happenings et cetera & so forth. There are two festivals in Cape Town in the not too distant future that I am particularly looking forward to.

1. ON THE EDGE OF WRONG

Two years ago, this festival was at The Intimate Theatre, and I was the lowly bar wench. For the first few hours, I was upset that the deathly February heat was being made more oppressive by strange Norwegian men banging on drums and playing funny electronic buzzes. Needless to say, their generous tipping significantly improved my mood and by the end of the weekend I was watching every set. On The Edge of Wrong is described as the premier exploratory music & multimedia festival in South Africa. To look forward to: New in 2012 is "Conversations on the edge of wrong". Each day of the festival, the audience will meet one or more artists in conversation on stage, sharing and discussing their work and ideas. Norwegian fine artist Ørjan Moen who will be the host of "DIVERSE diverse On The Edge Of Wrong". A meeting place for artistic exchange in the festival venue in daytime as well as evenings. He invites amateurs and professionals to be creative together. The venue will be used as an exhibition in progress. Yay!

www.edgeofwrong.com/2012

2. INFECTING CITY

A inititative of the Africa Centre & Spier, Infecting the City is an annual public arts festival (the only one of it's kind in Africa). The festival, at a most basic level, aims to make art accessible to all. Between 5 and 10 March 2012, artists will activate and energise communal spaces in the Cape Town CBD in the forms of performance, intervention, installation etc. This year the festival is curated by one of my lecturers, the ineffable Jay Pather. Hi-lights of last year included Myer Taub's Treasure Hunt & cling-wrapping public statues of controversial figures like Cecil John Rhodes. Word on the street is that Sanjin Muftic and Lance Herman are among the contributors to this year's festival: I can't wait!

http://www.infectingthecity.com/

I wish I could go and see this

I'm going to see Jimmy Carr LIVE in exactly one week

This is why I love him

"My dear Thora." "My name is Thea."

I am playing Thea Elvsted in an upcoming production of Henrik Ibsen's seminal play Hedda Gabler

(directed by Philip Rademeyer at the Arena Theatre on Hiddingh Campus 24-26 November).

I found these incredible photographs of a 1969 Italian production.

Thea

Hedda and Thea

The end: deceased Hedda, George and Thea