It's Day 1 of the festival, and already some of the awkwardness of the initiation is fading away. Having arrived at 2am at the hostel, only to find that some of my co-passengers on the late bus from Riga were also attending the conference, I woke up a mess - but happily anticipating the beginnings of the festival in earnest that evening.
This is the 18th rendition of DRAAMA festival. As far as I can tell, it's always had an institutional bend - mostly, it seems, the year's best Estonian works come to Tartu to be seen by whoever is interested in seeing famous work. This, from my experience, is not quite as cynical as it sounds - versions of this exist across Europe and abroad, and there are regional programmers who just don't have time or resources to visit Tallinn every second Tuesday to see the latest hot show, so having everything in one place can be very helpful. Audiences who might simply not have time or geographic location to see the shows they want to see can find them all in the one place.
In this case, the 100th year anniversary of the Republic of Estonia brings with it mixed blessings. On one hand, a solid English-language program consists of 13 shows, either performed in English or in translation. On the other hand, all of the shows, with I think a single exception, have solid institutional backing - so don't expect work with too much independence.
Two outstanding performances from Day 1 followed the afternoon welcoming formalities, and each of them were significant in their own way. In the small theatre of Tartu's giant Theatre Vanemuine, NO99's NO34 Revolution is a tightly choreographed work contemplating the impossibility of revolution and its consequences. Performed in the Harbour Theatre in Tartu's riverfront, Kadri Noormets's Journeys. Promised Land is either an incredible experiment in complicity, or I have totally lost any objectivity in a haze of 'audience flirtation': I'll let you decide. Will from Tartu New Theatre was unfortunately cancelled, and thus marks the only casualty today.
NO34 Revolution
Tallinn-based NO99 opens the festival, tasked with responding to Estonia in the 1910s. Their choice to focus on the concept of revolution makes sense, this being a time for significant revolution in the Russian Empire, as well as the Estonian War of Independence and a generally significant period of upheaval in the region.
We enter the theatre to a unison of gongs, played by the actors wearing red robes. Slowly, this gives way to a choreographed spinning - a kind of giddy spin that Maria in the Sound of Music would be proud of. Its a fairly astonishing act of discipline and stamina, the cast keep their formation for a good 10 minutes of stage time, accompanied by subtle changes in the harpsichord soundtrack (Jacob Juhkam).
Photo: Tiit Ojasoo
The spinning of the opening functions in multiple ways. Firstly, it makes a nice joke about Revolution - this having a double meaning in English, of 'circle' - mocking our assumption that there are some politics involved. 'You thought we meant overthrowing government? Really, we just meant to twirl'. That may seem like a bad joke, but it goes directly to the contention of NO34 Revolution - the superfluity and impossibility of revolution as a concept today. In this context, the gesture of spinning becomes both an accusation and an expression of disappointment.
When the dizzying spin of finally comes to an end, the labour can begin. The figure of the worker emerges as the cast remove their red robes to reveal blue overalls beneath. They begin to shake - aftershocks of the energy of the revolution - as they proceed to undertake their labour: the assembly of a bridge or frame from pieces of wood.
Bridge-building can be quite difficult when you're shaking uncontrollably. Watching the cast attempt to undertake their task evokes some strange associations, their movement is almost zombie-ish, in a perpetual state of deviation, but always proceeding towards its objective. Their tension is like a Jenga puzzle, filled with moments of uncertainty where the whole thing might collapse. It also oddly brings to mind the traumatic experience of conflict, leaving one shaking, and yet also needing to undertake the mountains of work characteristic of post-war periods. The frame itself is reminiscent of Meyerhold's constructivist-influenced sets, displaying the theatre set as a series of frames, minus their representative function.
When the frame is finished, it's time for the giant poles to come out. An actor straddles the pole - a giant, Mario-style cylinder reaching almost to the ceiling of the 20-metre high theatre - waving it around the audience like some giant appendage. The end of this phase - where the poles comes to rest intersecting the constructed frame, signals the beginning of the spoken poetry of the piece. Here, the poles become musical instruments, struck amusingly with thongs to the rhythm of Estonian poet Hasso Krull's metre.
Initially, the poem Meeter ja Demeeter (Meeter and Demeeter) seems like a strange choice with which to dissect revolution. The poem is essentially an update to the myth of Prometheus, who took fire from the gods. The myth is adapted to environmental concerns and the condition of instability, returning to an abstract constant refrain "Clouds are tall anyway/and grow all the time". The action of the poem follows a removal of foundations following natural disaster("I look around at the gas station but there is no tradition (...) I expected to find boomerangs or didgeridoos, but there's only rows upon rows of pre-flood water"*). We enter a city underwater, where passers-by have seaweed hair, and waves roar above.
It gives way to a strange, other-worldly conclusion, complete with alien-heads and long, glowing wands, appearing as tentacles on a jellyfish. Here, the play enters transhumanist dimensions, and brings its cynicism about revolution into an inevitable conclusion: that our inability to face the concrete political demands of today results in a transformation or destruction of ourselves, into higher beings, perhaps, but capable of nothing but spectacle. This demonstrates NO99's stated contention: that our absence of revolution means that no longer does the new replace the old - instead, the old replaces the new.
Journeys. Promised Land
Much fragility and uncertainty pervades the human condition. Our convictions about ourselves and reality are plagued with doubt and contradiction. The most confident belief systems are also the most brittle, shattering at the softest touch - causing their bearer to prove themselves time and again. Worse yet, perhaps, we may comfort ourselves in the banality of materialism, accumulating proof of our existence from the environment, restlessly seeking protection for an unprovable, endlessly-vulnerable self. When one immigrates, these elements are compounded and magnified, so that even the strongest details can transform and shift under our feet.
The beginning of Journeys. Promised Land, is perhaps its most unsettling component. Performer Kadri Noormets, dressed like a hipster superhero, first appears to us in the foyer as a would-be festival assistant or usher. She patiently waits for our attention, asking if everyone can hear her clearly, and explaining that we are to enter the space in single file. Slowly, as she organises and gently cajoles us, it dawns on us: this is the performer. It's a disarming opening but the message is clear - we are guests on this journey, without expectations.
Noormets leads us (obediently retaining our single file) into a room of mirrors, with a giant-Trojan-horse-looking set (designed by Noormets in collaboration with Sigrid Viir) occupying the centre. We sit down, and Noormets' continues an extended housekeeping list, explaining the nature of the performance, its focus on the experience of Estonian emigration to Brazil in the 1920s, and so on. Finally, having completed her slow bloom from attendant into performer, she asks us to turn around and face the wall, apologising again to the non-Estonian speakers for the section of the performance that can only be understood by 1.3 million native speakers. She climbs the object, and delivers an extended poetic contemplation of the immigration event and its testing of reality:
is there anything written on the card, does it have a stamp, address, anything
there's a lot of text on the card, it has a stamp, it is sent to me
can i read the language
the stamp says that's where the card came from
i cannot understand a word
It's followed by a long, guttural, baby scream.
The performance proceeds through several modes as Noormets' essentially fulfills the promise of the poem: swimming, running, and tasting across different spaces and textures ("but if you roll/ and I rolled.- the world would not let me go / not even a single wave goodbye"), punctuated by audience participation, as we are invited to share Noormets' speculation or assist her with her labour. The sound and lights (Taavi Suisalu and Oliver Kulpsoo respectively) sit almost subconsciously underneath this, colouring our experience delicately from the sidelines, changing our entire reality with subtle shifts. As the performer explores and plays on the giant set, it becomes like a new land itself, mysterious, shifting, unreliable - sometimes becoming a mountain, sometimes a lake. She herself seems uncertain at times, attempting things that dangerously question this new reality.
Photo: Sohvi Viik
The tests of reality undertaken by Journeys. Promised Land are quite specific, concerning themselves with the experience of the self and the other in changing surroundings. The essence of perspective as a governing tool for experience is both explored and relentlessly undermined, as is the validity of objects. This continues right up to the end, with Noormets hoisting the top section of the mountain to reveal a pool of water, in which she bathes before preparing our exit. It's a performance full of surprises, even as its playing field is quite defined from the beginning, and changes little throughout.
Although keen to plateu into a kind of playful contemplation, the show accumulates and then simmers with possibility. Sadly, almost none of these were taken up by a largely docile and placid audience. On a different night, with a different energy present, there would be no limits to where the show could go.
More than its poetic detail approaching the experience of immigration, Journeys. Promised Land serves adequately as a microcosm of contemporary human experience in the face of new precarities. These developments -and there are a production line of precarities created by capitalism - require new responses. Yet reaching back is helpful, as art has developed responses to our present conundrums before. Consider Orwell's closing arguments in Reflections on Gandhi (1949):
"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals"Like Orwell, Noormets puts her hope in people - itself a reality constantly in need of testing. It's a test that could go on forever.
NO34 Revolution
Directors and Set Designers:
Ene-Liis Semper Tiit Ojasoo
Music:
Jakob Juhkam
On stage:
Marika Vaarik
Eva Koldits
Rea Lest
Jörgen Liik
Ragna Uustal
Mart Kangro (guest)
--
Journeys. Promised Land
Author and director: kadrinoormets
Stage design: kadrinoormets and Sigrid Viir
Stage design execution: Sigrid Viir and Villem Säre
Lighting: Oliver Kulpsoo
Sound: Taavi Suisalu
Outside observer: Anu Vask
Technical support: Marko Odar
Performer: kadrinoormets
*I found this particular use of the didgeridoo to symbolise tradition from an Estonian writer sits uncomfortably with me as an Australian, feeling a lot like appropriation. It's more the fault of the poem - nevertheless, it sticks out awkwardly here as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment