Faki Day 5: On Freedom in Improvisation and ‘Perfect Agreements’

MONIKA'S INTRO:

 

When seeing posters like 'Wash your dishes', 'Clean your shit', and 'Respect our home', you can never forget you are in Medika. 

Good morning again! Cups full of butts from the cigarettes, empty paper sachets, table surfaces covered by tobacco remnants, empty bottles around and some unknown people sleeping on the sofa in the living area - just another party that was last night. You are washing a cup for your morning drink.

The guy on the sofa wakes up and asks for tea. No sugar, just milk. Ok, you wash a cup for him too. The guy hands you back the packet of milk, and you put it back in the fridge. Did you just become a host? You put another spoon of hummus in your plate, and ooze out onto the roof for breakfast.

Yesterday was the last day of the festival, and we had just one show to discuss - the instant composition dance work Out of Balance from Freiburg-based collective Quizzical Körper. You would think that would make our lives easy - the reality is totally different, as can be seen from the conversation below.

Photo: Monika Jašinskaitė

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Jašinskaitė: I think a festival in Medika is much more dangerous than your usual theatre festival. Because when you are 'in', sometimes you don’t find a way out. It’s like a black hole. It swallows you. How do you feel today?

Pettifer: I’m tired.

Jašinskaitė: That’s all you have to say? It seems like you are saving your energy.

Pettifer: It was a nice night. Many performances, some more time on the roof with an old friend, which I always like, and then a lovely morning walk through the city. And you?

Jašinskaitė: I had a good rest.

Pettifer: You dreamed?

Jašinskaitė: I didn’t dream about anything. I slept like a baby.

Pettifer: So you don’t remember anything?

Jašinskaitė: No.

Pettifer: Just like Andrea Lagos during the yesterday’s improvised performance Out of Balance, then. She also said in the forum that she remembers nothing of the actual performance. That forum afterwards was interesting, no?

Jašinskaitė: Super interesting. Do you think now it was worth having the discussions after the shows?

Pettifer: For sure with a show like that. Because I think understanding about their form really helps with reading the piece.

OUT OF BALANCE

Jašinskaitė: They call it ‘instant composition’, right? It was interesting to hear more about it, because very often I don’t like improvisation in the performing arts. Very often it’s an area of speculation. When a performance is made without improvisation, it has quite clear composition, and elaborated means of expression. And sometimes, with spontaneity, it’s a good excuse not to elaborate on a means of expression. For me it’s often not interesting, because performers who use improvisation unconsciously repeat certain patterns, and then a question for me comes: do they express anything at all? Is there work at all?

Pettifer: I mean, I think that feeling comes from reading the agreement early. In this case, for the improvisation to work, you really need this agreement between the performers.

Jašinskaitė: What kind of agreement? What’s the agreement about?

Pettifer: I think it’s often unspoken. Certain things you can’t do – you can’t leave the stage, you can’t talk to the audience…

Jašinskaitė: You mean like, rules of the game, rules of the improvisation?

Pettifer: Right. And sometimes the audience can read these rules early, and nothing can really change with them. And then I think the performance can sit in one single space and not change, or move. I think it’s very difficult to produce a shift in this agreement.

 Photo: Ivan Marenic