conversations in ten questions 8 : Marco Martins (Arena Ensemble) - Profil Perdu
In this series of interviews we try to get to know the directors/choreographers who will be the international guests at the 23rd Istanbul Theatre Festival in November 2019. Our eighth guest is Marco Martins.
Ayse Draz & Mehmet Kerem Ozel
Art Unlimited Performing Arts Editor & Writer
[The Turkish translation of this interview is published and can be accessed on art.unlimited]
What is the spirit of theatre in your opinion? How do you define contemporary theatre today?
In a way, my way of looking at the theatre has changed a lot over the last few years I have worked with ARENA (my company). What I want to draw from a process and a show is radically different today. I started by doing Repertoire Theater, which is something that would hardly interest me today as an author. I do not want to say that I do not admire many authors working from a single text but my processes are rather extremely open research processes, without an a priori defined body of text and therefore demanding for interpreters in another sense; these are laboratory processes where the text occupies only part of what we work on. I guess it has to do with a desire to know more about what echoes in each of them. These are distinct procedures and tools, which the live relationship establishes, allows and operates in a peculiar and unique sphere. The spirit of the theatre is the present.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
There is much talk of cinema as a total art but I feel that theater is closer to an art in which people synthesize what I present to them with a level of commitment and implication that interests me a lot. I like the possibility of creating a space and time where the text is just one aspect, where what is played is the articulation of all elements, which depend on what happens in that particular place and time. We start from the space and the body and presence of the actor to create an art that is renewed with each staging. Where the intersection of dance, movement, music, text, presence and modulation present almost infinite possibilities. I like it very much. A place where one perceives that the adjective “ephemeral” is not appropriate, as it presents a reality, an experience with undeniable impact and perpetuity. I am interested in this question, philosophically and theatrically. In this show I work for the first time with a professional illusionist, who performs in Las Vegas. Someone who knows well that illusion can be a reality.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
Sometimes the only way to save ourselves is by doing theatre or cinema, art. It is a place of encounter and reflection, sometimes hard and uncertain, if all goes well emotional and above all alive. For about an hour and a half, we strip and represent. Doing theatre is to make see. It means saying, "See it this way." It is putting ourselves in the eye of the hurricane, regarding a particular issue or context. In the case of “Profil Perdu”, it is about gender, affiliation, domesticity. As an author I end up choosing the themes to work on because they are the ones that worry me or confront me at that moment. In the case of this play, for example, it should be no coincidence that I decide to talk about paternity after the birth of my third child. It is without doubt my most personal piece.
When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?
Between two sentences a previous bridge is not required, and it is even good that there is an event beyond speech to arouse in the viewer, the search for what seems to be missing. This show crosses many texts by various authors ranging from Siri Hustvedt to Sophocles, Shakespeare or Kafka. It is the result of a long research on the subject, in which I searched for the texts that echoed in the actors. It is a process in which the text meets the interpreter and the interpreter appropriates the text. The actors' bodies are constantly metamorphosing, posing many questions, and the crossing of languages allows new meanings to be created. I have never worked directly from dreams, but as in dreams, the ways of theatre and its possibilities are almost endless.
When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one?
The titles to me are very important. I put them at the top of my priorities when I start working on a piece. I make a list of several titles - in this case initially nine - and then choose one or life shows me another better one. They correspond to different ways of seeing the piece, which along the process narrow down. In this case the final title came to me in an exhibition by Klimt/ Schiele that included a portrait in "profil perdu" (in Painting terminology, three quarters of a back*), and it seemed very strong and connected to the show ...
What’s your favourite line (or moment) in this performance, and why?
“We are myriad, all of us. Daisies. Witches. Alps. Masters. And skeletal little children looking up at the enormity of Dad.”
Are there any artist(s) whom you can describe as "my master", or any person whom you think influenced your art the most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?
During life we have many masters and many artists who help us find our way at work. They can be painters, choreographers, dancers or filmmakers. My influences come from many different places and my pieces refer artists directly. I constantly want to see what the artists around us have done and do. I insist constantly.
We know you more with your movies. In your opinion, are there any aspects of your movies that instruct your stage direction? Or to put it the other way around: What are the aspects of your works on stage that instruct your cinema?
At the beginning of my career, theatre was something that happened between movies. Today it occupies a central place in my path as an author and I recognize it as a very interesting specificity. The theatre that I do has a very direct relationship with cinema. The two forms are constantly intersecting in various ways. For example, my last play that premiered on the Norwich Festival - “Provisional Figures” - made entirely with non-actors in England is the origin of the upcoming film that will be shot in Great Yarmouth (Norfolk). It was a two-year process of research with the inhabitants of this coastal village. The matter itself is interesting for both ways, and at certain times of theatrical creation I am struck by the cinematic potential of a certain segment, which I reserve to explore more effectively in film. I recognize a common potential, but for some reason it becomes clear what best fits each medium. It is a complex and demanding process, but very interesting because of the possibilities and specificities that are presented.
What is your way of working on a play which has no text (but an idea) before the rehearsal process?
In my last four shows, I work with crossings of texts by various authors and personal texts built from the actors involved. I love working with non-actors because they raise very pertinent questions about the boundaries between fiction and reality. Working with non-actors proves to be another way for the great classics, without filters indexed to professional actors whose life is exemplary in terms of the relations between said reality and fiction, accustomed to constantly questioning them. They are masters in formulating this equation and this is sometimes very interesting in terms of form and method, although it creates a certain distance that is not found in working with non-professionals. I have many doubts, questions and curiosity about this separation, and I am pleased that they are patent in the pieces I create.
Is there anything in particular you want to tell people before they see this show? Is there anything particular you would like to tell the Istanbul audience?
Art and science are privileged places of experimentation; they can address fundamental issues for our existence that have no room anywhere else. Theatre, in particular, is still today a fundamental place of democracy, or even something better. Spectator is an insufficient word to define someone in a theater room. I invite you to be present.
*In this type of painting, the profile of the head is not visible. The artist portrays the head by turning it so far away that the only profile outline that is visible is that of the cheek. 'profil perdue' also pertains to any object that has been turned more than halfway away by the artist.
Ayse Draz & Mehmet Kerem Ozel
Art Unlimited Performing Arts Editor & Writer
[The Turkish translation of this interview is published and can be accessed on art.unlimited]
What is the spirit of theatre in your opinion? How do you define contemporary theatre today?
In a way, my way of looking at the theatre has changed a lot over the last few years I have worked with ARENA (my company). What I want to draw from a process and a show is radically different today. I started by doing Repertoire Theater, which is something that would hardly interest me today as an author. I do not want to say that I do not admire many authors working from a single text but my processes are rather extremely open research processes, without an a priori defined body of text and therefore demanding for interpreters in another sense; these are laboratory processes where the text occupies only part of what we work on. I guess it has to do with a desire to know more about what echoes in each of them. These are distinct procedures and tools, which the live relationship establishes, allows and operates in a peculiar and unique sphere. The spirit of the theatre is the present.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
There is much talk of cinema as a total art but I feel that theater is closer to an art in which people synthesize what I present to them with a level of commitment and implication that interests me a lot. I like the possibility of creating a space and time where the text is just one aspect, where what is played is the articulation of all elements, which depend on what happens in that particular place and time. We start from the space and the body and presence of the actor to create an art that is renewed with each staging. Where the intersection of dance, movement, music, text, presence and modulation present almost infinite possibilities. I like it very much. A place where one perceives that the adjective “ephemeral” is not appropriate, as it presents a reality, an experience with undeniable impact and perpetuity. I am interested in this question, philosophically and theatrically. In this show I work for the first time with a professional illusionist, who performs in Las Vegas. Someone who knows well that illusion can be a reality.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
Sometimes the only way to save ourselves is by doing theatre or cinema, art. It is a place of encounter and reflection, sometimes hard and uncertain, if all goes well emotional and above all alive. For about an hour and a half, we strip and represent. Doing theatre is to make see. It means saying, "See it this way." It is putting ourselves in the eye of the hurricane, regarding a particular issue or context. In the case of “Profil Perdu”, it is about gender, affiliation, domesticity. As an author I end up choosing the themes to work on because they are the ones that worry me or confront me at that moment. In the case of this play, for example, it should be no coincidence that I decide to talk about paternity after the birth of my third child. It is without doubt my most personal piece.
When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?
Between two sentences a previous bridge is not required, and it is even good that there is an event beyond speech to arouse in the viewer, the search for what seems to be missing. This show crosses many texts by various authors ranging from Siri Hustvedt to Sophocles, Shakespeare or Kafka. It is the result of a long research on the subject, in which I searched for the texts that echoed in the actors. It is a process in which the text meets the interpreter and the interpreter appropriates the text. The actors' bodies are constantly metamorphosing, posing many questions, and the crossing of languages allows new meanings to be created. I have never worked directly from dreams, but as in dreams, the ways of theatre and its possibilities are almost endless.
When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one?
The titles to me are very important. I put them at the top of my priorities when I start working on a piece. I make a list of several titles - in this case initially nine - and then choose one or life shows me another better one. They correspond to different ways of seeing the piece, which along the process narrow down. In this case the final title came to me in an exhibition by Klimt/ Schiele that included a portrait in "profil perdu" (in Painting terminology, three quarters of a back*), and it seemed very strong and connected to the show ...
What’s your favourite line (or moment) in this performance, and why?
“We are myriad, all of us. Daisies. Witches. Alps. Masters. And skeletal little children looking up at the enormity of Dad.”
Are there any artist(s) whom you can describe as "my master", or any person whom you think influenced your art the most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?
During life we have many masters and many artists who help us find our way at work. They can be painters, choreographers, dancers or filmmakers. My influences come from many different places and my pieces refer artists directly. I constantly want to see what the artists around us have done and do. I insist constantly.
We know you more with your movies. In your opinion, are there any aspects of your movies that instruct your stage direction? Or to put it the other way around: What are the aspects of your works on stage that instruct your cinema?
At the beginning of my career, theatre was something that happened between movies. Today it occupies a central place in my path as an author and I recognize it as a very interesting specificity. The theatre that I do has a very direct relationship with cinema. The two forms are constantly intersecting in various ways. For example, my last play that premiered on the Norwich Festival - “Provisional Figures” - made entirely with non-actors in England is the origin of the upcoming film that will be shot in Great Yarmouth (Norfolk). It was a two-year process of research with the inhabitants of this coastal village. The matter itself is interesting for both ways, and at certain times of theatrical creation I am struck by the cinematic potential of a certain segment, which I reserve to explore more effectively in film. I recognize a common potential, but for some reason it becomes clear what best fits each medium. It is a complex and demanding process, but very interesting because of the possibilities and specificities that are presented.
What is your way of working on a play which has no text (but an idea) before the rehearsal process?
In my last four shows, I work with crossings of texts by various authors and personal texts built from the actors involved. I love working with non-actors because they raise very pertinent questions about the boundaries between fiction and reality. Working with non-actors proves to be another way for the great classics, without filters indexed to professional actors whose life is exemplary in terms of the relations between said reality and fiction, accustomed to constantly questioning them. They are masters in formulating this equation and this is sometimes very interesting in terms of form and method, although it creates a certain distance that is not found in working with non-professionals. I have many doubts, questions and curiosity about this separation, and I am pleased that they are patent in the pieces I create.
Is there anything in particular you want to tell people before they see this show? Is there anything particular you would like to tell the Istanbul audience?
Art and science are privileged places of experimentation; they can address fundamental issues for our existence that have no room anywhere else. Theatre, in particular, is still today a fundamental place of democracy, or even something better. Spectator is an insufficient word to define someone in a theater room. I invite you to be present.
*In this type of painting, the profile of the head is not visible. The artist portrays the head by turning it so far away that the only profile outline that is visible is that of the cheek. 'profil perdue' also pertains to any object that has been turned more than halfway away by the artist.
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