Basically you can do whatever and say that´s theater – as long as you manage to persuade someone to watch it. Like Peter Brook said, all you need is an empty space, someone to walk through it and someone to watch. In Melkweg there was a relatively empty space – some podiums with a drum-set and a guitar and some other machines and lot of wires – and no walking, instead the few persuaded audience members saw a concert by Amateur and Meat. When I say concert, I mean making music that for someone with an absolute musical hearing would probably be a torture. Fortunately no-one in the audience seemed to have that problem and could enjoy two dancers playing a band with pure conscience.
So there they were, playing music: always serious Meat with his guitar and thoroughly ludic Amateur who hit her drums with pure joy, lead by improvisation. Images of the school theater performances I have seen kept coming to my mind but soon enough it was clear that having fun in pretending to be a band will not be the only purpose of those two being on that stage. Although the fun did get a bit tiresome after 45 minutes or so (there´s a good reason why classes at school are 45 minutes: after that the ability to concentrate disappears and you need a big change to keep the attention) – luckily the needed shift did arrive, few minutes late but not too late.
What we were shown was a love story and before one starts yelling “Again!”, let me assure you love really was all around and hovered nicely to the audience. When Amateur asked at one point if somebody kissed – watching them slowly turning, approaching each other until two bodies whirled as one – then the heard answer “Almost” was expected. How was that love narrated? Through songs of course, very simple ones, like “I love you” that consisted that line only and was repeated by both Amateur and Meat again and again. And recorded at the same time just to play it out loud a second later, so that after a while there were ten Amateurs and Meats saying “I love you”. The sincerity achieved by that kind of simplicity and repeating was overwhelming and almost made me ignore that the same method of singing-recording-playback was used through the performance often enough to resemble kids with their new toys. And why didn´t it all get too cheesy? Because the story was honest, not romantic and the only kiss lovers share in the end was through the rubber of masks – horse-mask worn by Amateur and rooster-mask by Meat. No-one said loving is easy.
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