Materia Prima, a performance-theater piece fresh from creation-residence at Théâtre de l’Aquarium, left me profoundly shaken.
Moved, I mean.
Materia Prima works as performance. It works really well is a step forward toward the un-narrative performance theater I praised the excellent Nathalie Béasse for a couple of years back (Psst! Are you listening, “New York Times” Letters page? Playwright Nathalie Béasse wins “Beyond Words Values” award. It’s a big deal). By “performance-theater” I mean “theater” that starts with dance-performance, roots in the un-narrative and visual, to achieve dramatic effect usually associated with theater.
The Materia Prima notes say that, through the performance, cie Scuola della Crisi – “Crisis School troupe” – is considering the – ordinarily wordy – issue of the roles of collective boredom and the pure pleasure of the fight in society: the performance is working Gide’s acte gratuit into a view on historical evolution and current affairs.
In other words, those people just over there shattering the Ming vases, tearing up the Picassos, pissing on the rugs and roasting an unfortunate stranger over burning books of wisdom and classic novels are doing it for the sheer hell of it – chaos is, or sometimes is, human nature.
A body must draw their own conclusions as to what is to be done about that. Seek a suitable mountaintop from where to await the worm’s turn or shoot the dumb fucks in their ugly mugs and laugh as the blood spatters? Discuss.
Potentially wordy the posited argument of Materia Prima might be, but aside from a sinister and clownish piano player wearing a full-headed bull mask uttering a few empty English words (presumably, to be cute and to draw attention to themselves), nobody says a word for the performances almost two hours (?!).
Entirely non-verbal, that is, unless a body counts the groaning of a naked woman, the desperate drone of TV coverage of September 11 2001 on stage or other commentaries coming in from outside the stage or intersecting sound, there is no dialogue or monologue to speak of, at least that I can recall.
Signifying deeds and instrumental words.
Wordless, along with what looks like a painter’s atelier, the fore-mentioned naked groaner, a townscape painting that made me think of di Chirico, the surrealist, a person costumed to seem to be the painting’s painter, the blurry slide show, the old footage of something or another on the wall beyond the projectionists and much more, Materia Prima is theater made entirely of atmospherics: arrangement of sounds, symbols, signs and portents.
The un-narrative drama and signifying of the performance takes place beyond words, in the liminal areas of the brain, where things form.
So, for example, while I am now preternaturally aware of what I believe took place in Materia Prima and the effect on my emotions of what took place, I am in measure only to say that Materia Prima has affected my way of seeing the world around me – affected my Imagination, adjusted (enlarged?) my perception.
Standing around waiting to congratulate the players and creator(s)-director after the show, I remarked to another member of the audience that the cast was remarkable – incredibly disciplined, complicit rather than synchronized and, apparently, deeply aware of what they were performing, as if they had written it themselves – inscribed it in their tender young hearts. She remarked that the director, Francesco Russo, has a reputation for very rigorous work but did not elaborate.
It looks to me that that is quite true if "rigorous" means being attentive to bright materials, human and non.
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I saw the performance-theater piece Materia Prima, written and directed by Francesco Russo with performers Ludivine Anberrée, Sylvie Debrun, Lucie Ouchet, Anaëlle Queuille, Lou Riouallon, Ali Rosa, HaoYang, on 12 September at the Théâtre de l’Aquarium, Paris. Produced by cie Scuola della Crisi, Casseline Gilet was assistant director, set design was handled, with Diane-Line Farr, by Ali Rosa. Matthieu Baquey handled technical design and lighting and, with Marina Dauriac, Nestor Laborier, handled video while Alissa Sylla handled sound. The performance note says that the performance takes its cue(s) from playwright, film maker and essayist Heiner Müller’s experimental trilogy, Philoctète, Horace, Mauser as well as The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama.