When the government closes your theatre

In September 2013, I visited Festival of the Wandering Hanger in Lutsk, Ukraine. The theatre is now being shut down.

What I saw there changed me as a theatre artist. For the first time, I was present at a festival that did not seem to be just there for the benefit of profit-raising and CV building. I saw something very simple, but that seems to be kind of lost now - an authentic collective energy around art.

What stunned me the most was that this festival seemed to have the full support of the local council - to the extent that they had co-operated with the organisers, local amateur theatre group GaRmYdEr, to stage the visiting plays in various locations in the city. So Garmyder took theatre to a local hardware superstore, the underground ruins of a church within the walls of Lutsk Castle, and an abandoned ex-Soviet nightclub.

Like the rest of Ukraine, Garmyder have been busy lately. On the 21st of November 2013, the Euromaidan Protests began. The protests began in response to President Viktor Yanukovych suddenly withdrawing from Free Trade discussions between Ukraine and the EU. This looked rightly suspicious to many Ukrainians, as just two months earlier Russia had responded with extreme rhetoric to the advancement of Ukraine's participation in the talks, and the history of Ukraine is one littered with exploitation at the hands of its big neighbour to the East and, more recently, European invitations which carry optimism and hope.

Garmyder acted as artists should in that scenario. They produced a two-night performance 'AU!, said to millions' in response to November 30's early morning police raid, which took as its source material the social media messages of the protestors, just eleven days after the protests began.

Two months later, the response from the local government of Lutsk was to call in the head of Garmyder, Ruslana Porytska, and tell her that her position was no longer tenable as of March 16th, 2014. When asked about the future of the theatre, the council gave the response that the theatre could not continue and would be forced out of its current home in the House of Culture. When asked the reason for this, she was told that the theatre had failed to tour to local towns of the surrounding region.

To the many volunteers, workers, and artists at Garmyder, it is very clear that this is not the reason.

On Hiatus

I'm putting theaterstuck on short hiatus while I undertake a project in Kosovo next week. More publication should follow shortly.

Meanwhile, an acknowledgement from me about the Ukrainian protests is necessary. My performances in the theme of 'protest' in the Wandering Hanger festival in Lutsk seem strangely pertinent now. Together with the performances I wrote about and the subsequent workshops in Kiev, these reinforced for me the willing and spirited nature of Ukrainian people, especially younger people but only reflected in the nuggety faces of the babushkas, clear and constantly manifested.

It would be nice for prosperous Western countries if events in Ukraine were driven by a kind of EU worship - but the reality is, this is a response to the scary prospect of Russian rule, which has once again raised its head.

Ukraine does not need Russia or the EU for support - but it certainly needs them to stop their conflicts, which damage countries like Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia.

The Ukrainian people deserve better than to be used as pawns for jostling regional political influence.

I wish those protesting a productive resistance.

Schwarz Tragen (Wearing Black)

Visibility suggests that we can solve societal problems by exposing and publicising them. The concept is from sociology, touted by media theorists such as John Thompson, and is maybe the most widely-employed (and ironically under-discussed) tactic for problem-solving of perceived social issues in the first world. It holds a privileged place over and above, for example, direct political action, which is perceived as confrontational, aggressive, and potentially destructive. This is mainly to do with its ability to initiate change without widespread disruption. Visibility maintains the social order whilst suggesting a slight adjustment - not enough to overthrow government, but nevertheless enough to generate tiny instability necessary for change. The approach is that the system is capable of self-correcting through a mechanism involving public and private dialogues and the 'fourth estate', the media, which is responsible for selecting, through the editing process, dialogues that will advance society. This idea has been in place since the mid 20th century with Habermas’ ‘Public Sphere’ and his demarcation of a shift from a “representational” culture to one of Öffentlichkeit, but also predates him with much theory related to media systems, most of which discuss the nature of visibility in some form or another. Exposure is, after all, a key role of the media.

Its adoption as a key method of problem-solving today is problematic. If one were cynical, one might suggest that merely making a problem visible today, in an environment of 'crisis proliferation', is not enough to cause any kind of meaningful change. With this proliferation occurring hand-in-hand with an overwhelming explosion of image culture - lives exposed on Facebook, invasions of privacy by the NSA among many others, and an endless stream of well-meaning causes flooding your life... visibility becomes rather a means, this imaginary cynic would suggest, to give the appearance of progress without ever having to undergo any actual authentic transformation on the part of the individual. In street-level terms, just because I walk past a beggar every day, doesn't necessarily mean, when my attention is finally drawn to their existence, that I will act on it, either personally or at a ballot box. The main point about visibility seems to be that it is totally not working. See all those images of melting ice in the newspaper? Not exactly compelling anyone to act, are they?

What Really Happened in Lutsk?

I was privileged to be the guest of Wandering Hanger Theatre Festival in Lutsk, Ukraine last month. As it was part of my brief, I tried to write some reflections, but they were not always good - sometimes nonsense. This naturally happens when you write criticism of theatre that is in a language you don't understand. The result is more like an impressionist painting than an accurate reflection.

To supplement my own writing, below is the perspective of Kiev art critic Olha Velymchanytsi, who, in contrast to myself, was able to comprehend all of the performances (with the exception of the Georgian group, whose language was understood by relatively few), and who generously allowed me to translate and publish her writing.

Her thoughts will also be published (in Ukrainian) at Kino-Teart magazine #1, 2014 - http://www.ktm.ukma.kiev.ua/
 

~

Wandering Hanger

by Olha Velymchanytsia

The International Festival Wandering Hanger, was held in Lutsk from 27 to 29 September for the first time. It featured a strong and cohesive team of organisers – the theater-studio Garmyder - and, importantly, a clear concept - "theatre outside the theatre".

                                                                                     

The theatrical exploration of different city spaces began with the Opening Ceremony, which took place at a children's railway. Drums beat and cameras flashed to welcome to the station a train crowded with festival participants – independent theatres from all over Ukraine and abroad, anticipating a full program of theatre and art and a city not yet known. Participants followed “Mandrishak”, a walking clothes rack - the symbol of festival.

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit

With just how little can one make a piece of theatre? With a word? An empty space? An agreement? Perhaps a single metaphor is enough.

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit was written in 2010, one year after the 'Green Revolution' that swept Iran, by an Iranian playwright who cannot leave his own country. It takes the form of a part appeal, part wide-ranging monologue from its narrator, writer Nassim Soleimanpour, employing the voice and body of a different actor each night, who has never read the play - on Thursday night played by dramaturg and Israeli national Ariel Nil Levy.

House lights on, and somewhat awkward introductory formalities over, the actor opens the envelope and begins to read. We are immediately addressed by the author of the play - lamenting his English skills, describing his surroundings, and giving occasional instructions to the actor.

Cue a suite of meta-theatrical devices, shaped in a kind of 'load the gun, fire it, repeat' loop, which call attention to how theatre functions whilst acting as loose metaphors for the context of the writer.

Given that the writer lives in Iran, it's a surprisingly amicable text. Where it would have been perhaps accurate, given, say, the brutal crackdown in the wake of the 2009 protests, to offer the audience a violent silence - we get a surprisingly generous monologue, hinting at some ideas relating to human behaviour under oppression, occasionally calling on the audience to participate, ever-careful never to put us offside. Occasional precarious moments - a list of the methods of suicide and the prevailing metaphor of the 'red rabbit' - are never left long enough for the audience to dwell on them. Essentially, it's a series of set-ups, a cycle of call and response, wheeled out one-by-one throughout the course of the evening.

Guest Criticism - London

I've never been able to understand London's theatre scene. It seems like less fun and more cut-throat business.

I reviewed two shows for the website a Younger Theatre, a Macbeth puppet show in a gorgeous theatre in Islington, and a verbatim piece, The Act, about the Sexual Offenses Act of 1967.

Day 3 - Wandering Hanger Festival

I am Lucky, by Leonid Kaganov

Former factory

Deep Theatre, Lugansk, (Ukraine)

The twin drivers of human progress during the 1800s – the Science of the Age of Enlightenment and Productivity of Industrialisation – broke down at about the same time. The endpoint of Science was the atomic bomb, that pinnacle of scientific achievement that brought in the option of wiping out entire cities with the push of a button. Efficiency and productivity were taken into unintended territory by Nazi Germany, when they were applied to ethnic cleansing and forced labour camps – transforming the unclear blob of humanity into an efficient mass, and cutting away the 'excess'.

Both of these events showed just how far the human being had departed from rationality and ethics in a quest for progress by which just about anything was justified. When they both collapsed suddenly, there was now this giant spiritual vacuum, a lack of direction for the human project.

Happily, we had a neat replacement, neo-capitalism, with its key objective of resource exploitation and growth coupled with an illusory endlessness, perpetuated by a mechanism of manipulative fabrications commonly referred to as consumerism, promising to fill that void with escapism, fantasy and sensation. These two drivers are our new gods, (combated, albeit, in retrospect, a bit hopelessly, and at times itself appropriated by its big brothers, by a broad movement called ‘humanism’, which took shape in arts and culture).

But, naturally, these two prongs have weaknesses. And what happens when the party’s over?

There are two ways artists can address this spiritual gap, a quickly looming train wreck. They appear, on the surface, to be very similar, and they often involve going back to basics.  Who needs consumerism anyway? We can have Butter-bread! Together! We can share it with each other! Quick, break it in half and give it to your neighbour! Just like we used to when we were kids! Isn’t this beautiful?

So what’s the difference?

Critical thought. I claim.