Sunday, September 9, 2018

DRAAMA Festival Day 6: Pensioner Exploitation and Cyborgs

The sun rises on the last day of DRAAMA. Some 40 shows have been staged over the past week, and by the end of tonight your correspondent will have seen a mere 16, and written on a (mere?) 13. That's only about a quarter of the program, and as I stated in the beginning, it's almost all the stuff that is translated or performed in English. These are inevitably the bigger works - such that my perception of the festival is inevitably, frustratingly skewed, towards the larger, bigger budget works that make up the 'Tale of the Century' 100 years celebrations of the Estonian republic.

All of which to say - there are other shows here - which would warrant my attention, perhaps even more than those I actually had the chance to see. Nevertheless, I am not stupid enough to criticise the festival for this - there are a lot of text-based works here, and making a single live translation of a theatre work takes a huge amount of labour, which has been done with precision and professionalism by dramaturgs and staff of the festival here. There has been many moments when I've been sitting in an audience with the headphones on, marveling at a twist in the language, or a measured piece of delivery from a reader. The synchronicity required, the delicacy, and the complicity are an uncelebrated part of theatre art.

Over the course of the week I have grown to love Tartu, and that was never clearer than my walk to yesterday's conference venue. Taking a slightly roundabout route (which left me pretty late actually) I found myself wandering through a park and stumbling across the ruins of Tartu Cathedral, perched on the hilltop of Toomemägi Park. With no time to inspect, I was forced just to glimpse briefly in surprise - an apt metaphor for my time here, which has been only the most superficial sample of Tartuian and Estonian existence.

The purpose of the International Conference on Baltic Drama was an exchange of ideas between Baltic countries, and this was divided into themes of National Identity, Comedy, and Drama Export, each presented by a panel of three speakers. Not all of the categories were followed thoroughly, although the Drama Export produced a lively debate over whether exporting of theatre should even be an objective at all - inevitably resulting in some staunch defense of theatre's old export systems of the playwright, the translation, and the tour. My (naive) feeling is that the context of the Baltic region and potential partnerships calls for new methods, strategies and show, but, like much that is old, the systems of commodification can always be re-invoked at the drop of a hat. People are always mighty impressed when your play is read overseas, after all.

Along with the conference, I saw 2 shows on day 6 - the strangely-written Million Dollar View and the impressive Beatrice. Both sat in a strange place for me, achieving what they set out to do, but with that thing leaving me somehow unsatisfied, like Tartu's indecisive September weather.

Million Dollar View

A common form of thievery is to get old people to sign away their properties without full consent. It's a brutal practice, taking advantage of a vulnerable person for personal profit, and it goes largely undocumented. Mostly, it's the families of the person themselves, who effectively seize property from dying 'loved ones' under the guise of acting in their best interests. Sometimes, though, it's an outsider, normally posing as an authority or figure of trust, who deludes the person into signing something they would never willingly sign. This doesn't just happen with property and it's not only criminal - old people's non-consensual spending represents an important part of the Australian economy, for example, where in particular gambling machines lead to financial tragedy in many Australian families.

Million Dollar View is a social drama by Paavo Piik that approaches this subject directly, but never quite explores the possible tragedy of the situation. Uncle Ants (Egon Nuter) is an aging pensioner in a poorly-maintained property in the city centre. His family come to visit him, but only to 'check on his health' - meaning, they are waiting for him to die. The play begins with the news that they have achieved permission to develop the site of the land from the city council, joyous to the family, but irrelevant to Ants, who has no plans to move anywhere. Appearing to take sympathy with him, Pilleriin (Saara Nüganen), the girlfriend of the son of the family Erki (Märt Pius), Pilleriin, returns to do him some favours, and to "take care of him a little". Only too willing to have beautiful, young help around, Ants shares stories of his time as a ballet teacher, and promotes his newly-found physical capabilities. The two grow close over the coming weeks, and when Pilleriin asks Ants to sign a document, he doesn't think twice about it. Meanwhile, the ghost of his wife comes back to haunt Ants, who may or may not be becoming demented.



Photo: Siim Vahur

The family have a meeting with the local city Councillor, who informs them that they would be free to sell the property - if only it were in their uncle's name. Checking the records, they find that the property has been gifted to someone. Furious, they approach Pilleriin, and slowly discover the betrayal. Visited by the ghost of his dead brother, Ants undergoes a dementia test, brought by the family to prove that he was unfit to sign. He passes, but soon learns of the true character of Pilleriin when another pensioner turns up to live in his new home.


All the pieces are there in Million Dollar View, but it never quite reaches the heights it could. The cast are fantastic, handling the subtleties of family drama with satisfying delicacy. Nüganen is particular fascinating, wearing an impenetrable poker face throughout, and only offering moments of transparency (in particular, a scene where she tries to walk past the military-attired Pius is perfectly-timed, demonstrating the increasing friction in their relationship, and displaying their mental calculations plainly). Some of the writing is great, with nice summary lines like "A human being is a strange creature indeed, they would rather believe a lie to the very end than review the initial belief". But something just doesn't quite work. Is this just a problem in the writing? Or is this about the difficulties in presenting such social dramas today? The premise of Million Dollar View has such potential, and its focus on an issue that is never discussed makes it a work of importance.

Maybe my difficulty was just with the use of the young ballerinas - some 20 or so young women who were revealed to us across the water during a discussion about ballet. Appearing for about 30 seconds (to do what directors call 'make an image') and then disappearing until right at the end, it feels like another wasted opportunity. Is this the 'collaboration between large and small theatre companies' that should be a hallmark of the EV100 program? Or is this just an appropriation of willing free labour - only for a duration of about 30 seconds, and made to wait an entire 2 hours on the other side of a river?

Beatrice

It’s probably an understatement to say the future of AI in general is pretty scary, but the area of biotechnology, or technology and the body, tosses up some of the craziest possibilities. While these subjects were being explored thoroughly by Sci-fi as early as the 60’s, things have come a long way since then, to the point where today, many of the possibilities are simply too horrific to discuss.

One scenario, the basis for the Beatrice, written by Tallinn-based playwright Siret Campbell, is the capacity to store human consciousness itself in data form, creating a simulation of our selves which is virtually immortal (depending on available resources, of course). There are many ways in which such a scenario interferes with deep-seeded (western) ideas of self, bringing new sets of ethical questions and situations.


Photo: Heikki Leis

Kristi (Marian Heinat) and Tom (Priit Strandberg) are a happily married couple, about to welcome the birth of a baby girl. They celebrate, naturally, with their heterosexual friends, one of whom, Yock (Veiko Porkanen), works for a company called Life Energy Innovations, which is experimenting with storing human consciousness via a chip called “Mootchie”. As Yock puts on a lounge track via commands to his A.I, Zeus, he explains the possibilities (“The human uses 5% of its brain – think of what it could do with the other 95%!” or in connection with storing the consciousness of a grandfather “The kids might become interested in family history, they might want to ask”), Tom expresses his sceptical viewpoint. However, Tom and Kristi have their own AI at home, Nikki, who plays them music while they assemble their new Ikea cot. Unfortunately, Kristi develops complications, and has to get a Mootchie to monitor her body. Even more unfortunately, she has a car crash, and Tom is faced with a situation where he must decide if he wants to download her consciousness before she dies. Of course (because otherwise the plot can’t advance), he accepts: leading to a slippery-slope of surrogate bodies, confusion of human and robot agency, and especially some tricky situations with sex.

Beatrice has the feeling of a thriller novel, with cliffhangers and unanswered questions keeping us in suspense. Like much great sci-fi it’s extremely well researched, covering at least everything from Donna Haraway onwards, and even more carefully constructed to lead an audience into new possibilities – making its proposals seem all the less far-fetched. The set (Maarja Meeru with video from Emer Värk) is an cinematic whirl of gizmos and cold lights, whilst the soundtrack (Ardo Ran Varres) amplifies our digital anxieties into more physical ones, appropriately rumbling the speakers when something particularly disturbing is happening.

In the end, the play is about the age-old question of human agency – what is the nature of human choice and free will? Campbell squeezes her characters most when they are facing some terrifying ethical choice – such as Tom’s (avalanche-like) decision to activate the stored consciousness following a cocaine-fuelled night in which he gets into a fight in a bar and contemplates suicide. The uncanniness of Kristi’s first appearance as the voice of the digital consciousness (unexpected human cries of “Help! Where am I? I can’t see anything!! Am I blind? Tom, is that you? What happened??”) is repeated later on, when she adopts her surrogate body to meet their friends for champagne again (“don’t talk about her like it’s an animal or an object”). The image of corporate ethics is naturally presented fairly negatively, but also convincingly – their advertisements on giant projector screens throughout could easily find their doubles in today’s reality (for instance, one sounds awfully like many ads for life insurance with lines like “Would you want your loved ones to worry?”).

Campbell is targeting particularly middle-class concerns here – an image of procreation, material wealth, and family. In this, the play is relentlessly effective, turning the screws on our desire for immortality, preservation, consumption, and gender constructions of the body. This is worth pointing out, because whilst it’s a strong point of Beatrice it’s also revealing of its limitations, for in attacking this target, it also validates that point of view. These types of techno-dystopias affect many outside the spheres of middle-class consumption (for example, the surrogate body of Kristi is depicted as a white victim of domestic violence who donates her body, but a version acknowledging a more white supremacist biopolitics might depict people from precarious, non-white parts of the world captured against their will). Within this frame, though, Beatrice executes an effective opening of anxiety which, while it presents no proposals, will certainly have audiences reconsidering digital ethics, or some, perhaps, considering it for the first time.

Million Dollar View
by Paavo Piik, 
director Elmo Nüganen
Set design - Martin Mikson, 
costume designers Martin Mikson and Anna-Liisa Pärt, 
light designer Merily Loss, 
musical designer Riina Roose
With Evelin Võigemast, Saara Nüganen, Egon Nuter, Argo Aadli, Märt Pius, Kalju Orro, Märt Spinner, Helene Vannari, Rain Simmul, Anne Paluver, Liina Tennosaar, Raivo Rüütel and others


Beatrice
by Siret Campbell, 
Director - Ain Mäeots, 
Set design - Maarja Meeru, 
Video artist and visual electronic solutions - Emer Värk, 
Composer and sound designer - Ardo Ran Varres, 
Lighting design - Meelis Lusmägi,
Movement leader - Britt Kõrsmaa. 
With Priit Strandberg, Kärt Tammjärv, Marian Heinat, Veiko Porkanen, Linda Kolde, Liina Tennosaar, Karol Kuntsel, Silver Kaljula, Nora Ann Lunge and Elise Mustkiv.

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