When I first saw “Hey Girl!” three years ago in Avignon I wrote: “This performance has been called theatrical adventure and one can agree with that – it was more like a spectacle than theatre, happening at the meeting point of visual art, performance-art and theatre. Small but with a high ceiling Eglise des Célestins met the audience covered with smoke, ear-plugs were handed out at the entrance. As the smoke vanished, the audience saw a metal table under the flashing lamp and a pink figure on it, slowly dripping drop by drop with every drop distinctly audible till the naked body of a woman was revealed. I must admit mu incapability to describe the coexistence of light, sound, sculptures and bodies in Castellucci's performance. Even the previous short description only captured one scene lasting more than fifteen minutes. Castellucci uses symbols that are quite easily recognizable, one could even say banal like the birth of Venus or sword versus lipstick but does it in a way that has a lot of theatre magic in it – like the sword burning a cross on the cape – and is not afraid of simple ideas as a woman and society's expectations towards her in “Hey Girl!”.”
After yesterday's performance I'm somewhat bemused: the smoke wasn't half as thick and the sound half as loud as I remembered and the first scene certainly did not last more than five minutes. So have there been alterations to the performance over the past three years or does the space “Hey Girl!” is performed in really have such an impact or is it just one of those performances you can really enjoy only once when you don't have time to notice all the hidden technological solutions. Probably all of the above but let's not go there. What did stay the same, was the simplicity of symbols used and performance's need for the audience to be willing to narrate themselves – one cannot enjoy Castellucci's living pictures just by recognizing symbols but has to fill the time taken by actress(es) to create these symbols, thinking beyond the primal meaning. One might argue that with “Hey Girl!” this willingness is more easily achieved if you're a woman and have been treated as a beauty-product or as a member of the weaker sex or even as a threat on masculinity through male activities like fighting a war. I wouldn't know.
After yesterday's performance I'm somewhat bemused: the smoke wasn't half as thick and the sound half as loud as I remembered and the first scene certainly did not last more than five minutes. So have there been alterations to the performance over the past three years or does the space “Hey Girl!” is performed in really have such an impact or is it just one of those performances you can really enjoy only once when you don't have time to notice all the hidden technological solutions. Probably all of the above but let's not go there. What did stay the same, was the simplicity of symbols used and performance's need for the audience to be willing to narrate themselves – one cannot enjoy Castellucci's living pictures just by recognizing symbols but has to fill the time taken by actress(es) to create these symbols, thinking beyond the primal meaning. One might argue that with “Hey Girl!” this willingness is more easily achieved if you're a woman and have been treated as a beauty-product or as a member of the weaker sex or even as a threat on masculinity through male activities like fighting a war. I wouldn't know.
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