Described as ‘a wordless play’, Stillen positions itself as a subversion of a traditional model. It sets itself a constraint – to be wordless – to which neither physical theatre nor dance need subscribe, yet it also promises to be a play. That is to say, not an act of wordless play spread over a certain length of time, but a wordless play: a definite article, a constructed whole, a singular unit. A play without words. Billed thus, we can expect subscription to – or, at the very least, suggestions of – certain modal or structural conventions.
Only Stillen doesn’t look or feel at all like a play – at least not in our own, peculiarly English vocabulary of theatre. We might more readily term it performance or theatre, on the grounds of its weaving structure, dizzying ambiguity and, accordingly, the impossibility of tallying its segments into full-bodied narrative(s). There is enough representation within to read individual fragments as if scenes, but any hope of narrative correspondence or connection is beyond reach. Instead, it seems more an exploration, a presentation or a theatrical essay. Yet, if it chooses to call itself a play, we must find some way of handling it as such.
While I wouldn’t want to lumber the form with any necessary qualities, by mooting narrative, fiction, representation or other such property as essential to a piece’s being a play, I do believe that plays necessarily exist in multiple forms. To talk of performing a performance is needlessly tautological, yet we can talk of performing a play. Play and performance can be thought of as distinct. As a wordless play, therefore, Stillen still has a text of some manner. Like Peter Handke’s The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, the text consists solely of physical instructions or, in the common parlance, stage directions. We are watching an enactment (or performance) of the text (or, if you prefer, fixed score) and, as such, there can be no definitive version. (Unlike devised work where any performance is definitive of that particular stage in the work’s process.)
With this in mind, we can readily separate performer from role. Onstage, in various combinations and interactions, are a man and a woman, an old man and an old woman, a child (more precisely, a young girl) and a man whose face is covered with plasters, stripping him of sight. We know another performer could step into each of the roles without creating a new part and so, for all that it may appear to be the case, at no point do these performers play themselves. Instead, they play the text and in doing so each stands in for a species of humanity (and, together, for humanity as a species) before they exist as specimens of it.
Stillen’s concern is one we all share, namely, what it is to be embodied. Translated, the title becomes ‘Suckle’ and in the variously-shaped human forms before us, which seem to grow oddly sturdier with age, we see the path from birth to death. Though it seems to writhe with an existential angst, cursing our imprisonment and imperfections, Stillen maintains an oddly calming, almost meditative, streak. It draws great comfort from the absolute mutuality of our predicament – our equality in isolation – and the catharsis of these shared anxieties through physical contact. Hell may be other people, but they are also the Good Samaritans that make it bearable.
Lotte van der Berg’s choreography ticks all manner of boxes, such that you can almost see the mind-map of ideas. There are frissons of foreplay alongside lashings of aggression. One lends her eyes to another, guiding him across the stage, and another relies on someone else’s mouth to chew. They hang off each other and collide; dance, kiss and strike; become entranced by one another; become repelled. Yet, as it churns through this assortment, there is none of the clunking awkwardness that so often drags down such broad explorations. Instead, the piece has a fluidity, whereby no segment ever feels a self-contained sketch designed to hit one point alone, and the soft obscurity of the images gives them leave to exist only half-graspable.
The real coup is the combination of materiality and viscerality at play. We absorb the sensations of the bodies before us and leave longing for the touch of another. But this craving can only come if counterbalanced by the quiet horrors of isolation and this is van der Berg’s real triumph.
Her stage seems at first a Mediterranean terrace of terracotta, but reveals itself to be tiled with soap bars. On the addition of water – in a stunning, sodden moment that recalls a new-born struggling against a tide of amniotic fluid – the surface is made slippery and those that step on it must struggle against it gracelessly. Once upset thus, it can never be restored or repaired, just as we, on attaining self-conscious distinct of body and self, can never return to that state of naivety. Everything becomes difficult. Everything is impossible. Everything is imperfect.
The subject itself is as slippery as its treatment and Stillen will conjure many things in many minds, but it is undeniably powerful and thought-provoking stuff. However, the indefinite metaphors and density of suggested possibilities, make it a gripping ninety minutes marked as much by revulsion as tranquility.
0 comments:
Post a Comment