Big bank houses straight out from the pages of the „Burda“ catalogue for contemporary architecture standing next to the abandoned looking former power buildings, relics of the socialistic era – yes, now I understand what the West-European tourists came to see five or six years ago in Estonia. Slovakia still has that charm of a transmission country I as an East-European know not how to miss and so I let the condescending attitude salute the freedom and act totally shocked, seeing brown tap water running on my early morning toothbrush. It takes a few more years to get the nostalgic smirk I have so often noticed on the faces of the western backpackers in Tallinn.
So a perfect setting for the politicly talkative theatre is placed and waiting. Will the Godot´ be found in Nitra? It never came to Estonia so maybe Slovakia is the place it is hiding. That is, if it exists. Any time has the obligatory terms that drive everyone crazy and political theatre is one of those here and now: critics are constantly on a quest to find it, preaching of the importance of an artist to actively react to his or her surroundings. Question is, if the Holy Grale remained lost because no-one knew where to look or because there was nothing to find. As with all the over-used notions, political theatre has more definitions than Baal had rape victims. In the wider sense anything which goes against the conventions - of the form, approach to a certain theme etc. - can be seen as political. But I would somehow like to believe that such an urge to approach common things from new angles is precoded deep in the perception of art and to see here political statement is to lower your horizon of expectation to the level so minimal even Gestapo would never have noticed it. If you take theatre outside of the theatre buildings as with “Danton Case” by Jan Klata or have a woman playing Baal like in the interpretation by Alice Zandwijk, is that really making a statement? Are these two conventions – theatre space and gender – still conventions or has playing with those themes become the internal part of art today? The answer was eloquently given by Baal herself in Zandwijk´s production where in the beginning she draws a penis on her stomach, making a gesture suggesting that “Here it is, let´s move on!”
“Tomorrow There Will Be” by Czech National Theatre combines opera and documentary material to tell the story of Milada Horáková, executed by the communist regime. The combination is intriguing but there does not seem to be any real intention to make revolutionary opera since in the second part of the show the music is sometimes even forgotten and the production does not deal with the opera genre as such. But it does look at the above-the law actions of an dictatorship: is political theme enough for a performance to have to be called political theatre? With the case of “Tomorrow There Will Be” the respect towards the material the authors had is so great that the performance does not analyse anything and the characters on stage remain without the human aspects – just like the communist regime. The parallel is obviously in the mind of a friendly spectator, in reality it is the outcome of an under-achievement (I can not know the local aesthetic importance of the production but I guess the piece was received at least with the same amount of enthusiasm as “Wallenberg” by Erkki-Sven Tüür last year in Estonia). And even if the production did have more guts in approaching the theme, I would still not find it helpful to call it political theatre. How much new information would we gather by calling “Romeo and Juliet” relationship theatre? And would “Leonce and Lena” be first political theatre and then relationship theatre – just because the political theme enters the stage first – or the other way around?
One might argue that since the marriage is the result of a political inevitability, this somehow makes the play more political than relationships concerned. In the Ján Rozner interpretation the emphasis does seem to be on the journey of the prince Leonce from not wanting to take the predestined place in the structure of being – to marry a princess and become a king – to ... I would like to say that to the recognition that there is no escape from the structure since the woman he married out of love turned out to be the princess he escaped from but Rozner does not really get to that conclusion. In fact it seems like he is not sure himself how possible it is to revolt against the system and so we have a production which is lacking the plausible energy of a young believer and at the same time does not quite agree with what the text is saying but does not yet have the counter arguments.
The aforementioned Jan Klata´s “Danton Case” surely goes further from the detached presentation of historical figures – Robesbierre and Danton this time – but was it an equal match to the text? Some arguable technical solutions (black-outs between scenes) and the length (performance would have gained as a whole with cutting out some scenes in the second part) aside, Klata showed entertainingly and convincingly at the same time how undemocratic the democracy really is. People, the mob as Danton calls them is just a stupid mass who follows the one who speaks best or sings the most popular tunes. After 90 minutes of watching Danton and others trashing that mob and then nodding with an understanding and compassion, listening to the speech the imprisoned Danton gives to his audience, you realise that Klata is right – you are stupid. All that is already quite close to being a political statement, is it not? Yes, on the theoretical level.
Philosophy, politics, literary studies, sociology et al have always offered theatre interesting material, methods to speak about life without stepping down to the level of everyday commonness. Art has that right and perhaps even obligation, but for me it becomes really political when the creator does not fear to loose the immunity of an artist and offers opinions, chooses sides. Sometimes with art-works like these the aesthetic purposes are not any more most important and it is precisely at this is the moment when using the term political theatre (art) can be helpful in analysing and evaluating the perception of the piece. The Godot is out there but it is not necessarily what we expected it to be. Maybe someday it will visit Nitra, but at the moment the only political statement made here is my arrogant and condescending essay about the Slovakians being six years behind us. I wonder if critics can also be seen as artists?
*The article is written in the FIT Mobile Lab workshop which had the topic of political in theatre.
So a perfect setting for the politicly talkative theatre is placed and waiting. Will the Godot´ be found in Nitra? It never came to Estonia so maybe Slovakia is the place it is hiding. That is, if it exists. Any time has the obligatory terms that drive everyone crazy and political theatre is one of those here and now: critics are constantly on a quest to find it, preaching of the importance of an artist to actively react to his or her surroundings. Question is, if the Holy Grale remained lost because no-one knew where to look or because there was nothing to find. As with all the over-used notions, political theatre has more definitions than Baal had rape victims. In the wider sense anything which goes against the conventions - of the form, approach to a certain theme etc. - can be seen as political. But I would somehow like to believe that such an urge to approach common things from new angles is precoded deep in the perception of art and to see here political statement is to lower your horizon of expectation to the level so minimal even Gestapo would never have noticed it. If you take theatre outside of the theatre buildings as with “Danton Case” by Jan Klata or have a woman playing Baal like in the interpretation by Alice Zandwijk, is that really making a statement? Are these two conventions – theatre space and gender – still conventions or has playing with those themes become the internal part of art today? The answer was eloquently given by Baal herself in Zandwijk´s production where in the beginning she draws a penis on her stomach, making a gesture suggesting that “Here it is, let´s move on!”
“Tomorrow There Will Be” by Czech National Theatre combines opera and documentary material to tell the story of Milada Horáková, executed by the communist regime. The combination is intriguing but there does not seem to be any real intention to make revolutionary opera since in the second part of the show the music is sometimes even forgotten and the production does not deal with the opera genre as such. But it does look at the above-the law actions of an dictatorship: is political theme enough for a performance to have to be called political theatre? With the case of “Tomorrow There Will Be” the respect towards the material the authors had is so great that the performance does not analyse anything and the characters on stage remain without the human aspects – just like the communist regime. The parallel is obviously in the mind of a friendly spectator, in reality it is the outcome of an under-achievement (I can not know the local aesthetic importance of the production but I guess the piece was received at least with the same amount of enthusiasm as “Wallenberg” by Erkki-Sven Tüür last year in Estonia). And even if the production did have more guts in approaching the theme, I would still not find it helpful to call it political theatre. How much new information would we gather by calling “Romeo and Juliet” relationship theatre? And would “Leonce and Lena” be first political theatre and then relationship theatre – just because the political theme enters the stage first – or the other way around?
One might argue that since the marriage is the result of a political inevitability, this somehow makes the play more political than relationships concerned. In the Ján Rozner interpretation the emphasis does seem to be on the journey of the prince Leonce from not wanting to take the predestined place in the structure of being – to marry a princess and become a king – to ... I would like to say that to the recognition that there is no escape from the structure since the woman he married out of love turned out to be the princess he escaped from but Rozner does not really get to that conclusion. In fact it seems like he is not sure himself how possible it is to revolt against the system and so we have a production which is lacking the plausible energy of a young believer and at the same time does not quite agree with what the text is saying but does not yet have the counter arguments.
The aforementioned Jan Klata´s “Danton Case” surely goes further from the detached presentation of historical figures – Robesbierre and Danton this time – but was it an equal match to the text? Some arguable technical solutions (black-outs between scenes) and the length (performance would have gained as a whole with cutting out some scenes in the second part) aside, Klata showed entertainingly and convincingly at the same time how undemocratic the democracy really is. People, the mob as Danton calls them is just a stupid mass who follows the one who speaks best or sings the most popular tunes. After 90 minutes of watching Danton and others trashing that mob and then nodding with an understanding and compassion, listening to the speech the imprisoned Danton gives to his audience, you realise that Klata is right – you are stupid. All that is already quite close to being a political statement, is it not? Yes, on the theoretical level.
Philosophy, politics, literary studies, sociology et al have always offered theatre interesting material, methods to speak about life without stepping down to the level of everyday commonness. Art has that right and perhaps even obligation, but for me it becomes really political when the creator does not fear to loose the immunity of an artist and offers opinions, chooses sides. Sometimes with art-works like these the aesthetic purposes are not any more most important and it is precisely at this is the moment when using the term political theatre (art) can be helpful in analysing and evaluating the perception of the piece. The Godot is out there but it is not necessarily what we expected it to be. Maybe someday it will visit Nitra, but at the moment the only political statement made here is my arrogant and condescending essay about the Slovakians being six years behind us. I wonder if critics can also be seen as artists?
*The article is written in the FIT Mobile Lab workshop which had the topic of political in theatre.
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