Extraordinary Narratives for Young Audiences of All Ages - II

The Schöne Aussicht (Bright View) International Theater Festival, which appeals to young people and children, but most of all to those who still feel young and have a child spirit, ended last Sunday (June, 13), but the recordings of the performances can be watched until the end of June.

One of the four shows of the festival was the production of Compagnie Bakelite from France called Envahisseurs (Invaders). It was Olivier Rannou, who both created and staged it, which is one of the qualified examples of object theater.

Its subtitle, “Theatre with Unknown Objects”, contains a pleasant humor about both its content and form and the show itself. On one hand, it refers to the "unknown" state of the invading aliens, and on the other hand, it mocks the "known" state of all the objects used in the show, which we are familiar from our daily lives.

Well, what are the things Rannou used in the show? Three bond-style briefcases, miniature soldiers, visceral dolls, touristic miniature sculptures representing the cities with their most popular monuments, a model house, car scents in the form of pine trees, dishwashing gloves, jelly cakes in different colors and sizes… Rannou uses some of these objects directly representing the miniature version of themselves, whilst he uses some to represent other images than themselves with a creative interpretation. For example, jellies become aliens, one of the bond bags becomes a spaceship.

The spectacle, without words, mostly borrows its aesthetics from American B-type movies of the 1950s-'60s about aliens invading the earth, for example, the classic of the genre that come to mind, such as 1956's Invasion of Body Snatchers. Even Rannou himself, with his white shirt, black tie and suit, white powdered face and thick, sewn-in hair, looks like he stepped out of those movies.

In this show, which is also miniature in duration, that is, it lasts only 25 minutes, Rannou presents the audience with an enjoyable spectacle, playing with size, space and perception, and dressing it up with subtle humor.

The last show of the festival was Liebe üben (Love Pratice) by Theater Sgaramusch from Switzerland. 

Two people, one woman and one man, came to the empty stage. The first word was taken by the woman. After saying that her name is Nora, she told that she fell in love with the Belgian Ives when she first met him years ago showing the man beside her. She said that her childhood dream was to marry a Belgian and have a child with him, but she knew that this could not come true because Ives had a boyfriend. Saying that the theater stage is just such a thing, a place of fiction, of unfulfilled dreams, she told that she bought a wedding dress and asked Ives, "Will you practice love with me?"

Two middle-aged actors, Nora and Ives talked about love, the various aspects of love, and their own love experiences. Then, from time to time, during the show, they let us listen the sound recordings of the answers given to the questions they posed to children and young people on many topics like love, affection, relationship, unrequited love, being a lover, marriage, having children, etc.. They sometimes asked some of these questions directly to the audience sitting in the hall, and by making comments on the answers they received, they turned these sections into short conversations. After each episode, which was based on different questions, they danced to the accompaniment of a love song, with movements representing the emotions evoked by that particular question.

All this was staged with a taste of the documentary theater and with the awareness of the reality of the stage and the moment. All sound control, such as playing the songs and the pre-recorded interviews was done by the actors from a computer on the floor of the stage.

The choreography of the dance sections, which resembled Pina Bausch's aesthetics in terms of the theme of love and male-female relations, and her question-answer method, was simple and effective. The dance scene containing uninterrupted kissing seems freely inspired by the famous scene of Peeping Tom's Le salon. 

Nora Vonder Mühll and Ives Thuwis, both having dance backgrounds, were natural and fluent both in the dance and spoken parts. 

While watching the show, which is layered with the sincerity and naturalness of Nora and Ives talking about their own past, the variety of answers given by people of different ages and backgrounds to the questions, and the transformation of these themes into dance aesthetics, one inevitably thinks about how s/he will answer those questions herself/himself. In fact, this made the show intellectually engaged and interactive for the audience, if not physically.

Just like the name of the festival “Bright View”, the JES team that organized the festival, as well as the performances livestreamed, displayed a multicultural, bright, hopeful and open view to the future, freed from common social, cultural and sexist assumptions. The best example of this was the video they put on the air while waiting for the livestream to start before each show. The texts that passed continuously under the screen and at the same time the words said by the actors one at a time, such as "The game is almost starting", "You may want to darken the place you are in", "Don't forget to take something to eat and drink with you" are in five languages, in German, English, Turkish, French and Italian. This entertaining introduction, in which the actors diversified their words by adding emphasis, mimics and gestures, was also preparing the audience for the show that they will watch soon. I think this festival had the most creative waiting room session among the livestreams I've watched online for a year due to the pandemic.

[the turkish version of this article was published online on Tiyatro Tiyatro Dergisi]