Isabella's Room by Jan Lauwers and the Needcompany is a performance combining theater, dance and music (as in: musical, singing...).
Here is a story of a surface. Telling the story of a surface might just be the most difficult thing. When you're on the surface of the stage.
Here is a story where the word "lie" comes back in all the forms, as all its synonyms.
Here is a theater play that is an excuse to tell a story about Lauwers' father. Here is a life of an imagined woman that is an excuse for a theater play. Here is a play that's and excuse for a performance. A performance that's an excuse for a dance piece. A dance piece that's an excuse for a musical.
A musical. In the most common of worlds, that would be the right description, combining all the genres in an entertaining suite. Somehow, this is not enough. And somehow, this isn't necessarily a good sign.
It all starts with an excellent prologue. Excellent, because honest. Lauwers goes to the front of the stage and while the spectators are still entering, starts telling the story of how the play came about, and who plays who, introducing all the performers very casually.
And I would love it all to stay that way. Which it doesn't, because then begins the play. With all the problems a theatrical distance may bring, with all the longdiscourses that the self-centered artists got us used to (the text is also by Lauwers), with the tricks and licks of contemporary theater (suddenly changing subjects, rhythms, levels of performance, juxtaposing various languages and references...). What's my problem with that? Here is an example: For a very long time the confusion between the dead and the live is just confusion. But since anything goes, the characters lose the name of action. Which makes them at the same time surprizing and difficult to believe, and thus completely unsurprizing.
Lauwers himself stays onstage, oscillating between the roles of author and actor, sometimes reminding me of the productions of Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish director that continued directing his actors during some performances. But this is more modern, more slick, clean, and...distant.
In the best moments, it reminds me of some more jazzy and theater-wild version of Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark. Only Lauwers avoids Hollywood stories at all costs. His plot swirls and jumps and stretches to the very limits, creating a contemporary, personal ritual.
The memories brought on stage are more and more violent, the world seems increasingly corrupt and difficult to handle, death leaves nothing behind, neither does bitterness. Still, they dance and sing. And move on. Slowly. I suppose a ritual should be slow, but that's one reason I rarely attend rituals. This is not my time.
Everything is an excuse for everything. A beautiful, stylish excuse. Like in some jazz jam session that struggles for heterogeneity. But where does the jazz go once it's all set and fixed?
"I think you're just confused. You think too much and then your imagination runs wild." - Isabella's Room.
ps: See other reviews here. (damn, am I the only one who isn't extatic about it?)
Minggu, 04 Juni 2006
Jan Lauwers' "Isabella's Room" at the Alkantara Festival
Jumat, 02 Juni 2006
Read More (English)
Although we all agree that art is not just visual art, it is sometimes difficult to get off the paved track of pictures. And so, anything from music through performing arts through literature seems to vanish in the haze. As if it were a different matter.
LibraryThing, as you might have guessed, is a project that has to do with reading. It is as simple as a good idea can get: share what you read. Share it with others, but also - share it with yourself. By creating a virtual library of your own books, you enter the realm of infinite connections and marvelous adventures. Well, you get the picture. You organize your books, tag them, describe them, and, above all, see what you've been missing. You can see who else owns these titles and what else they own, and thus start jumping from one tree to another... Of course, you can rate them and compare your ratings with others. Of course, if you don't like the Web 2.0 idea of communication network, you can have a private library and forget all the rest. And what's really pretty, and I mean real nice, is that you just type a tiny bit of info, and the rest is filled in automatically through one of the nearly 50 libraries its connected to worldwide(among them, the Library of Congress). If you can't find it - you can always import it, say, scanning the image and putting in the data.
I see one downside: language. Having books in several languages, I find it difficult to share and follow only the books printed in English. There has been a surge in French books (thanks to some positive internet press in France), but all this is just painfully slow. Once again, it somehow feels as if the world was English, and the rest was an appendix (one Polish library, none in Portuguese...). Then again, if the rest of the world simply doesn't make all these great sites... Then again, if they did, how would I know about it? (see the geographical location of LibraryThing users here.
This is a very young initiative (started less than a year ago). It has relatively few books on art. We could start changing that.
Signing up is just unbelievably easy. Just write your username and a password, and you're in. My mini-test-catalogue is here. If you want to catalog over 200 books, it costs $10 (for a year) or $25 (lifetime). Methinks: yay.
