What is it like to be an Israeli?

What is it like to be an Israeli?

Cardboard boxes with dates written large on them, a soccer, two armchairs and a horse – the latter a prop from another play – that’s all Ido Shaked and Hannan Ishay need to set off extraordinary stage fireworks.

The two actors and directors presented their latest play “A Handbook FOR THE ISRAELI THEATRE DIRECTOR IN EUROPE” at the ‘wortwiege’ festival in the Kasematten in Wiener Neustadt under the label ‘Théâtre Majâz’. Both are from Israel and left their country a few years ago – Ido Shaked to settle in Paris and Hannan Ishay to study and work in Austria. However, he now lives with his family in Tel Aviv again and can report first-hand on the situation there.

A HANDBOOK FOR THE ISRAELI THEATRE DIRECTOR IN EUROPE (Foto: Julia Kampichler)

A HANDBOOK FOR THE ISRAELI THEATRE DIRECTOR IN EUROPE (Foto: Julia Kampichler)

The show, which is conducted in the style of a double conférence, arose from the idea of talking about Israel and what is happening there on stage, as the two men are always asked what is going on there when they travel. So they took advantage of the lack of information to contribute to a better understanding of the events with their view of the developments. And they did this using the medium they know best: theater.

After just a few moments on stage, it becomes clear that Ido and Hannan are throwing their arguments, peppered with plenty of humor and side-swipes, at each other with such speed that you are happy to hear their easily understandable English. Supertitles or subtitles would be completely pointless in this constellation, but their conversation is so well paced that even audiences who don’t speak English on a daily basis have no difficulty following them.

They talk about politics as well as soccer or food, they talk about Israel as an occupying power as well as the fact that they are not allowed or able to talk about many things. Partly because it contradicts the raison d’état, partly because they themselves do not know how to deal with a development whose spirals of violence are inevitably driven upwards.

A HANDBOOK FOR THE ISRAELI THEATRE DIRECTOR IN EUROPE (Foto: Julia Kampichler)

A HANDBOOK FOR THE ISRAELI THEATRE DIRECTOR IN EUROPE (Foto: Julia Kampichler)

As difficult as the situation in her home country is and as hard as it may be to believe that an evening about Israel can be staged in a peppery, spicy way that offers the audience the highest level of entertainment, the endeavor is plausible. When asked whether they would even be in a position to perform their play in Europe in view of the current outbreaks of violence from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, they both respond with an unequivocal “Yes! How else are we supposed to deal with this situation if not by reflecting on stage!”

The anti-Semitic trend in Europe is addressed just as much as the feeling of being torn apart. Torn between the luxury of living abroad, but at the same time not having the opportunity to take part in anti-government demonstrations in Israel. Ido and Hannan are aware that their venture on stage could be doomed to failure at any moment, but they are professionals enough to ensure that this does not happen. Their witty pas de deux captivates, affects and invites laughter at the same time, leaving the audience with plenty of feelings and even more food for thought.

“What are you going to do? Go away? Stay?” Ido asks his colleague Hannan at the end, who has no conclusive answer. Instead, they embed their final reflections in the great European myths such as those of Odysseus and Troy, the city that was reduced to ashes, thereby locating the horror and suffering, but also the resurrection from the dust, in those millennia-old tales that are just as valid today as they were in antiquity.

What a wonderful reference to the host “wortwiege”, which also repeatedly takes up ancient material in its festivals to illustrate exactly the same thing. Rating: Absolutely worth seeing!

Sea glitter and fire crackling

Sea glitter and fire crackling

According to Greek mythology, Dido, who came from Phoenician royalty, was the founder of Carthage. She fled her homeland to escape her brother and, by acting intelligently, obtained enough land in the new land where she had arrived with followers and ships to build Carthage. Described as a tall, beautiful, wise and untouchable queen, she fell in love, through the intervention of the gods, with Aeneas, who, having fled Troy, asked her for the right to stay. The love story, which ends tragically, has been adapted many times in literature and found its way into some 90 operas. Henry Purcell created “Dido and Aeneas“, from which ‘Dido’s Lament‘ gave rise to one of the most famous and beautiful mourning arias in operatic history.

Turkish dancer and choreographer Korhan Basaran made a guest appearance at the wortwiege festival “Europe in Scene“, this time subtitled “Sea change”. He presented his dance piece “Dido” in which he himself slips into the role of the woman loved and then abandoned by Aeneas. The gods demand of Aeneas to leave Dido alone in Carthage to sail across the sea with his people in order to found a city himself, namely Rome. This breaks the heart of the once proud woman. Basaran condenses the action to the last moments of Dido’s life, after she has been abandoned by Aeneas, and makes visible all the emotions that heartbreak can bring. In Dido’s inner monologue, he concentrates on the existential emotions that arise at the moment of abandonment. Small paper boats, folded by the audience under his guidance at the beginning of the performance and placed on the stage floor, make it clear: it is the sea that has brought the two lovers together, but ultimately also separates them again. Underpinned with musical layers by composer Tolga Yayalar, Purcell’s Dido Lament resonates from the start. If at first it is only the harmony sequence, transposed into electronic sounds, that can be heard delicately, at the end Dido herself will sing along the refrain of this lament loudly and emotionally fiercely moved. Yayalar also created the auditory perceptions of the horn of a large steamer, the chirping of birds, ominous-sounding demon noises, and the cracking and crackling of burning wood. Ataman Girisken also contributes significantly to the success of the production with his visuals. Depending on the mood, he bathes the space in glittering blue and white wave refractions, provides it with a twinkling starry sky, transforms it into a dark cave or triggers frightening moments when Dido meets her death at the stake. Red tongues of fire blaze until the figure of Dido lying on the ground visually dissolves. The billowing conflagration that follows also remains palpable in its abstractly designed undulations, which at the same time seem incredibly aesthetic.

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Korhan Basaran’s Dido is wracked by painful convulsions, but also reveals that defensiveness that results from wounded pride. An expressive facial expression makes every single emotional emotion visible. Be it despair, fear, hope or disgust. The tall figure in a long skirt, the upper part of the body clad only in a shirt, conveys in a contemporary way the image of Dido that has been handed down in tradition. But Basaran also slips into Aeneas, who, lantern in hand, affirms to Dido that it is not his will but that of the gods why he must leave her. It is the brilliantly crafted melange of his expressive dance, the selected text passages from Virgil and Christopher Marlowe that he recites, the atmospheric visuals as well as the music that create a harmonious, emotionally gripping stage event. With Basaran’s interpretation of Dido, he continues to write a tradition that has captivated countless generations to date and, judging by the audience reaction, continues to emotionally grip them today.

This article was automatically translated with deepl.com

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From the ape-like gait to the human jogging mania

From the ape-like gait to the human jogging mania

Man moves and fights against gravity from his first days to his last. This is one of the core statements of Aleksandar Acev, who was invited by wortwiege to the casemates of Wiener Neustadt. As part of the festival “Europa in Szene”, in the special “Sea change” edition, he rocked the hall with his production “Lucy was not long ago”.

Acev is a “body language teacher,” author, director as well as a university lecturer at various European universities, where he imparts his knowledge to acting students. Moving on stage and finding the right expression for the character and the situation is one thing. Observing people in everyday life and analyzing their emotional state or even their character in a few moments – this is also possible with Acev’s Bodylanguage knowledge. Both mediation approaches are thematized in his performance – however not theoretically dry, but made visible with his grandiose use of the body.

C Julia Kampichler Lucy was not long ago ASC 0069

Lucy was not long ago (Photo: Julia Kampichler)

Lucy the monkey is considered one of those ancestors of man who practiced the upright gait and thus established our way of life on two legs instead of four. Acev approaches this topic with a great deal of knowledge, body awareness and a large dose of humor, and delighted audiences across all ages with his story of animal and human movement history.

His brilliant show ranged from an easy introduction, the explanation and pointing out of many possible human gaits to four grandiosely performed, different shoulder looks and the resulting different forms of expression. With Lucy on one side of the stage and Scully – a miniature human skeleton – on the other side, he had brought two artificial antipodes to him, which he filled with life.

Particularly entertaining was the part in which he demonstrated his observations of jogging people: he juxtaposed one type, characterized by its looseness and bouncing gait, with another who, with his upper body bent backwards, seemed to be stuck in his past. Still others, who rush headlong into the future, without ifs and buts, or those who, bent with grief, nevertheless set off on the run – all of them and many more were alternately imitated by Acev almost every second. In the process, the performer juggled words just as well to accompany his performance.

The different ways of greeting, submissive, deprecating, fearful or hopeful triggered just as cheerful moods as the references to the direct Lucy kinship in the field of male sports greats. The tennis player Djokovic beating his chest with a clenched fist, the famous, unforgettable headbutt of the soccer player Zinédine Zidane – against the Italian Materazzi at the World Cup – or the wide-legged goal celebration of his colleague Ronaldo: all these short and yet so striking movements, demonstrated by the mime, made it clear that Lucy and her kind cannot have been extinct for so long. The evolution of man’s fusion with his chair – this was another theme that served as an eye-opener for one’s own movement patterns. Who hasn’t lounged at the office chair without energy on several occasions, who hasn’t had the feeling of being fused with his keyboard, and who hasn’t felt prompted to expose his body to sporting activities more often?

Probably the most amazing thing about Acev’s performance is the realization that with this kind of “edutainment” you can gain knowledge in a short time that you wouldn’t get by reading books for hours on end. And it does so in a highly enjoyable way. All who have seen “Lucy was not long ago” have been given a new observational insensitivity by the artist at the bottom. What a great side-effect, triggered by a theatrical event as part of the wortwiege festival.

This article was automatically translated with deepl.com

An exciting mixture

An exciting mixture

Bouchra Ouizguen has been part of the touring schedule of cooperation partners in contemporary dance for several years. France and Belgium play a prominent role in this; but the idea of supporting productions across countries is also becoming more and more popular, especially in the festival business in this country.

Although she has now staged her seventh production, she is still a border crosser in contemporary dance. In interviews, she repeatedly says that neither she nor her dancers have had any training in this field. What distinguishes her work, or rather the beginning of her work on this project, is the tracking down of people who still master traditional song and dance forms.

In “Elephant”, Ouizguen has set herself the goal of bringing Moroccan dance and music onto the stage in order to snatch them from oblivion and disappearance. As a metaphor, she has chosen the elephant, which is an endangered species and may already be extinct in the coming century.

Together with three other protagonists – one younger and two older women who have already worked with Ouizguen – she presented the result of her musical and dance search for clues in the programme of the Wiener Festwochen at the Odeon. She intuitively and creatively processes the material she finds into a one-hour piece. A piece that not only reveals the traditional, but also wraps this traditional in a new cloak.

Before her spectacle begins, however, the stage floor is cleaned by two women with large floor rubbing cloths. Then they come on stage – no longer dressed like cleaning ladies, but in festive robes – with two other dancers to clean the space with the help of incense. Here it becomes clear that what will be shown is partly taking place in the ritual realm. And indeed, a dancing creature appears with a colourful headdress, trimmed all around with bright bast strings. Soon it is whirling across the room.

Unlike at the very beginning, the music is not coming from the tape now. Now it is the women themselves who sing live on stage. Polyphonic litanies form the main volume of the musical events. Starting with a female singer, they are echoed by the others and at the same time rhythmised by them with the help of djenbes, small bongo drums. This musical setting remains the same throughout the performance, but the individual danced scenes change. One witnesses a solo performance by the youngest woman, who collapses in exhaustion, whipped up by the music, which gets faster and faster. But the women also perform an impressive group choreography.

It forms the artistic climax of the performance. Designed as a contact improvisation, it is, however, anything but improvised. After pieces of clothing have been pulled offstage – which can be understood as a haunting metaphor of human demise – and the women have intoned a litany of lamentations, the three dancers group themselves into a single organism. They move it through the hall in ever new combinations with the help of lifting techniques. The impression is that they hold each other in their grief and pain and never let each other fall. This is a highly emotional and meaningful scene. It shows people in an exceptional situation that they can only overcome through mutual cohesion. How they connect with each other, let themselves fall into the others, are pulled or pushed by them, how they nevertheless do not go down in their loudly articulated pain, but support and hold each other over and over again, can also be read metaphorically to the highest degree.

The mixture of traditional music and new choreography does not seem artificial at this moment, but quite natural. It enables the audience to think far beyond the dance. The fact that Bouchra Ouizguen’s work almost automatically finds itself in a larger, cultural-historical context also makes her work interesting for other disciplines such as musicology, cultural anthropology or sociology.

This article has been automatically translated with deepl.com.

Everything has already been there and yet much that is new

Everything has already been there and yet much that is new

Michael Köhlmeier became known in the German-speaking world not only for his novels, but mainly for his personally coloured stories about Greek mythology. The Schauspielhaus in Graz invited him to give a reading on this very topic. The author and multi-creative, even song lyrics and compositions come from his pen, told about the origin of the Greek gods and their world in Olympus up to the creation of mankind and the beginning of the Trojan War.

Those who know his CDs on the subject, which he recorded more than 20 years ago, may have been a little surprised. Köhlmeier presented the Greek mythology in a highly amusing conversational tone with many finesses that make a good narrator. In just a few words, he achieved very lively characterisations of the gods and humans, which he sometimes also endowed with a habitus typical of them. That he described Zeuss as a particularly good lover, constantly on the lookout for new adventures, was obvious and handed down over thousands of years. Peleus, the later husband of the sea nymph Thetis, however, he characterised with the remark that the latter was very fond of saying “yes!”. While the audience smiled at this, they did not yet know that they would later be grateful to the narrator for this “yes! At that point, namely, when after countless enumerations of the gods his name came up again and the great pondering began as to who this Peleus had been after all. “You remember, that’s the one who always said ‘yes’,” Köhlmeier skilfully jogged many a memory. This is just one of many examples of how well he knows his narrative craft.

Along the genesis of the gods, one also learned all kinds of interesting cultural-historical facts, such as the invention of the guitar by Hermes, who achieved this feat as an infant on his first day of life. Or also that the artists simply “lied” in their depiction of Leda and the swan. Leda had taken the form of a goose during her union with Zeuss, but this is not visible in the paintings. One could marvel at the preservative power of divine armpit sweat just as much as at an original action by Odysseus, who hoped that he would not have to go to war with it. The statement that this made him the first conscientious objector in history was, like so many humorous comparisons, very well received by the audience.

In addition to all the sometimes meandering life stories and incidents, the author also shared his personal thoughts on how this mythology came to be. He pointed out that this storytelling, which took place from generation to generation, began when there was no rule-of-law structure. Also interesting was his idea that these narratives could also relieve people of a burden. To learn that one’s fate is not unique in this world, that acts such as murder and manslaughter, adultery and betrayal or character traits such as cowardice and arrogance, exuberant anger and vanity and all the resulting suffering have always existed, meant a relieving realisation for many people.

The idea of taking Michael Köhlmeier on stage in Graz, someone whose name has charisma beyond the theatre scene, was rewarded with a very well sold house. A clever move at a time when some audiences are still hesitant to accept live cultural offerings.

Michael Köhlmeier filled the Graz Schauspielhaus with his “Evening of Greek Mythology”. A good idea to get still hesitant audiences back into the house after the pandemic-related break.

Michael Köhlmeier became known in the German-speaking world not only for his novels, but mainly for his personally coloured stories about Greek mythology. The Schauspielhaus in Graz invited him to give a reading on this very topic. The author and multi-creative, even song lyrics and compositions come from his pen, told about the origin of the Greek gods and their world in Olympus up to the creation of mankind and the beginning of the Trojan War.

Those who know his CDs on the subject, which he recorded more than 20 years ago, may have been a little surprised. Köhlmeier presented the Greek mythology in a highly amusing conversational tone with many finesses that make a good narrator. In just a few words, he achieved very lively characterisations of the gods and humans, which he sometimes also endowed with a habitus typical of them. That he described Zeuss as a particularly good lover, constantly on the lookout for new adventures, was obvious and handed down over thousands of years. Peleus, the later husband of the sea nymph Thetis, however, he characterised with the remark that the latter was very fond of saying “yes!”. While the audience smiled at this, they did not yet know that they would later be grateful to the narrator for this “yes! At that point, namely, when after countless enumerations of the gods his name came up again and the great pondering began as to who this Peleus had been after all. “You remember, that’s the one who always said ‘yes’,” Köhlmeier skilfully jogged many a memory. This is just one of many examples of how well he knows his narrative craft.

Along the genesis of the gods, one also learned all kinds of interesting cultural-historical facts, such as the invention of the guitar by Hermes, who achieved this feat as an infant on his first day of life. Or also that the artists simply “lied” in their depiction of Leda and the swan. Leda had taken the form of a goose during her union with Zeuss, but this is not visible in the paintings. One could marvel at the preservative power of divine armpit sweat just as much as at an original action by Odysseus, who hoped that he would not have to go to war with it. The statement that this made him the first conscientious objector in history was, like so many humorous comparisons, very well received by the audience.

In addition to all the sometimes meandering life stories and incidents, the author also shared his personal thoughts on how this mythology came to be. He pointed out that this storytelling, which took place from generation to generation, began when there was no rule-of-law structure. Also interesting was his idea that these narratives could also relieve people of a burden. To learn that one’s fate is not unique in this world, that acts such as murder and manslaughter, adultery and betrayal or character traits such as cowardice and arrogance, exuberant anger and vanity and all the resulting suffering have always existed, meant a relieving realisation for many people.

The idea of taking Michael Köhlmeier on stage in Graz, someone whose name has charisma beyond the theatre scene, was rewarded with a very well sold house. A clever move at a time when some audiences are still hesitant to accept live cultural offerings.

(Foto: ©Udo Leitner)

Text was translated automatically with deepl.com

 

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