June 21st, 2015
This morning I attended a small lecture by KIRSTEN DEHLHOLM, artistic director of HOTEL PRO FORMA. She showed slides and talked about her work for 3 hours. It was pretty amazing. So, i finally heard the term I’ve been waiting for to describe all this work I’ve been drawn to- and I can’t believe I have not heard it before now- tableau vivant. It describes her and Robert Wilson’s work perfectly. I discovered Kirsten Dehlholm through this Darwin Opera with The Knife: Tomorrow, In A Year. Just incredible stuff. I asked her which contemporary performance artists inspire her (same question I asked Pussy Riot) and she said Romeo Castelucci, Rimini Protokol and James Turrell. Other interesting things she said: her work is collaborative, but NOT collective, and that she designs shows so that the words and the images do not kill each other. All of her stage pictures are designed before she even casts a show. She maps out every actor position in detail, and there is little deviating from it. She has worked with the same lighting designer for 20 years and describes him as a “master of light”. Obviously i loved that. After the lecture i met up with Lisi and we saw Divaldo ToyMachine, a czech puppet company. Puppets are a huge deal here. It was really great to see a celebrated young company that is working in that medium here. Next we saw a film that was produced by members of the puppet school at Kampa- it was part stop motion animation and part documentary about The Velvet Revolution. It consisted of parents describing the riots of Nov 17th to their children, and playing out the scenarios with toys on a huge map of the city. It was really super cool, and helped illustrate the political and cultural context of the revolution. Sooo much more about today…. but the last two things really quickly: I saw a few more country exhibitions and today…. drumroll: ESTONIA takes the prize for most righteous exhibit so far. in 2012 a theater company made a fake political party in order to start a public discourse about how elections and political parties work in their (and most) countries. Basically.. being a politician is treated as a specialization.. and its possible to be an elected official with more experience with marketing than governing. So this company, Theater NO99, they say: “if political parties can execute bad theater, why can’t theatre companies execute bad politics?” BRILLIANT. They make a political party with great impact and success. The documentary in the exhibit was awesome. Please watch the video on that link. WAY TO GO ESTONIA. So cool Thomas Choinacky was right about you. 🙂 On our subway ride back from our show, we do our drawing assignment. Draw the subway car in the span of the three-stop ride. A tiny girl sits next to me and starts talking to me in Czech. Her parents translate: She wants to draw a picture too. I start drawing her, and then she starts copying my picture of her, so then Im drawing her, drawing a picture of my drawing!! It was really cool. Her parents loved it. Lastly, below I give my thoughts on Spitfire’s Antiwords. Long day, need sleep. Happy artist.
Performance Notes: Divaldo ToyMachine’s Rytíri (“Knights“)
The show is performed by two completely lovable and engrossing young puppeteers who are also the designers of the show. They have a grungy bohemian vibe mixed with a Ren-Fair-meets-kids show aesthetic… hard to describe, but super cute. The mini proscenium is designed with the show’s theme in mind; coats of arms and painted columns and pediments which have a medieval flair. The puppets are visible behind them, which keeps the objects from becoming too precious or magical when they appear- they are really only imbued with magic when they are being puppeted. The show is in Czech, but its basically a knight who fights a dragon to save a princess. Scenery changes are done while expositional songs are strummed out on acoustic guitar. Lots of funny voices and interactive moments with the children. A small kid is given a tiny sword, and he is hoisted onto the shoulders of a puppeteer to slay the dragon. The kid is then knighted! I basically had a huge smile on my face the entire time. I’m usually not big on puppets, but this show RULED. It was an easy 40 mins, and the adults in the room loved it.
Performance Notes: Antiwords by Spitfire Company
We saw a performance based on the works of Václav Havel by Spitfire Company at Palac Akropolis. Video sample here. Not having been previously familiar with Havels work, I was at a disadvantage for understanding how this company was interpreting it. My surface take was that it was about two dudes at a table drinking beer dealing with their masculine bravado and kinship… The performers were two women wearing huge bronze heads, pulling them up and swilling beer every few minutes. Highly stylized “masculine” body language to physicalize the dudely exchange. One of the performers appeared to drink at least 5 beers through the course of the show. At times they broke character and winked at the audience. The audience was very generous with laughter. I like the show and thought it was funny, but not “ha ha” funny. I am told that it was quintessential Czech humor- dark. It was good. Would have potentially been better had I had more connection to the material.