Interview
Marlene Monteiro Freitas
September
2020
Wed
9
[In October this year] Teatro Municipal do Porto will present a two-week focus dedicated to your work, featuring two Porto premieres and a rerun of a piece [Jaguar] that premiered during DDD – Festival Dias da Dança 2016. What does this retrospective mean to you at this point with three projects that display different influences and stem from different creative moments throughout your career?
The joint presentation of Guintche (2010), Jaguar (2016) and Mal – Embriaguez Divina (2020) is a unique opportunity to highlight elements that are common and unique to each of those works. Despite the lapse of time between Guintche and Jaguar, for example, I still deeply relate to those pieces, and I keep going back to them, updating them and transforming them even if almost inconspicuously. My relationship with my pieces in general has nothing to do with seniority, but rather with topicality, that is to say I’m interested in intense, strained, strong relations, at times mysterious, counterintuitive, etc. The way the Greeks figuratively depicted their myths in pots, for instance, is very contemporary in my view, regardless of having been invented twenty centuries ago. This is an invitation/challenge we’re happy to answer.
Mal – Embriaguez Divina is one of the pieces presented in the scope of this focus. It is based on the notion(s) of evil as embodied in different entities and aspects, which is a topic that somehow seems to cross all your work. What was your starting point in this project and what does the final object you’ll present to the audience look like?
Despite the fact that it has been clear for many that I work on evil, since they consider it to be a topic that crosses my work, I find it curious that for me it has been a great revelation.
One day, I was at home, and I spotted the spine of a book on a shelf whose title feature the word “evil”: Literature and Evil, by Georges Bataille. I immediately felt the word summarised several of my loose thoughts. And thus appeared title and topic.
What will evil look like as a piece I don’t know yet. There are some ideas, mainly two important ones: that of tribune, from where one sees best (and is also best seen); and that of court, where justice is discussed. Those are two starting points for the team to work, knowing that in the course of rehearsals the pieces claim the way they’re headed or even self-determination. The several developments taking place along the way are what fundamentally defines the nature of the pieces. A specific element of this project is that there are actors from Munich’s Kammerspiele in the group, which truly poses a new challenge.
Before Mal, there was Canine Jaunâtre 3 (2018), created for the Batsheva Dance Company, from Telavive, Israel, which was a deeply changing experience. On the one hand, given the intrinsic relationship between artistic project and the sociopolitical context where it was carried out. On the other hand, due to the abrupt way it stopped touring, that is to say the silencing, censoring and blocking at a time when several theatres and festivals wanted to present it to the public. Only a few were able to watch it. It was a very intense and accelerated working process that was suddenly and unexpectedly halted, since the interest of the programmers was immediate, like walling a wild horse and making its legs stop.
The research process and creative work behind Canine was accompanied by moments of awe, shocks, and absurd and tragic realisations, and so it became impossible to narrow the experience down to a single piece. And thus emerge Cattivo, an installation with shelves with music scores, Mal – Embriaguez Divina and (un)common ground, a multidisciplinary programme that we’re developing in partnership with another company, curators, artists, lecturers and editors, and that is scheduled for the 2020-21 season.
At some point, I spontaneously identified the absurd and tragic realisations with the Devil, that evil being from our imaginary with which we associate ideas such as metamorphosis, features that are morally and ethically negative, deadly, disease-related, and also body fluids such as pus and so on. In my eyes a possible embodiment of evil was forming, evil engineering, the dirty, the deliberate mistake, a seemingly immune and unpunished machine with virulent properties such as spread, destruction and control, before which a great feeling of helplessness was being outlined. Such vision may be the price to pay once you’ve descended to Hell guided by researchers, artists and historians. Such a well sheltered and concealed Hell. Once you’ve seen it, that sight sticks to your “Achilles tendon” and won’t come loose. And the same goes, perhaps, for evil…
In a way there are certain common features to all your works, which those who follow your career can recognise. Which ones would you highlight as being more present or showing a more authorial nature and enabling a direct identification of a piece signed by you?
Characters and fiction. Or images and phantasy. Work elements follow one another as if it were a dream, establishing precise, intense, sometimes contradictory relations among them, lending themselves to multiple readings. As they combine, coexist and penetrate one another, they provide the pieces with new paths or end up choking them. At times both.
Musicality and rhythm. Both performance—gestural work—, and the chaining of situations on stage, that is to say the structures of the pieces, pursue specific musicalities and rhythms. More often than not they partly set possible meanings to the pieces. I would say they play an important dramaturgical role. Pleasure. On stage, the performer chases the childish principle of the game: on the one hand, to “pretend” under the eye of the audience; on the other hand, to find the manifold sides to the piece that he himself weaved and keeps on weaving, and that are only revealed to him as the audience projects their own images on what they watch, listen and feel.
As an acknowledgement of your career, the Venice Biennale, one of the most important cultural events in the world, decided to present you with the Silver Lion Award in 2018, so as to appreciate a career dedicated to performing arts, which goes beyond geographical and cultural boundaries. What’s it like to receive such an important award and to have the Venice Biennale describing you as someone with an “electrifying presence” and a “Dionysian power”?
It was a great honour to receive this award. The power of Dionysius is that of illusion, mystery, bewitchment, of seeing what’s not there, feeling what can’t be touched, believing and wanting… That is all I look for when I go to the theatre to watch a performance. That is also what I look for with my work as a creative process and with the performance. Whether I’m able to or not is another matter…
In order to bewitch, one needs to put reality on hold, wither away everyday life and its rules, laws and worries. And only then truly arises a geography of free movement, a land without borders, a space where the senses, emotion, reason and the imaginary penetrate one another very close to the dream universe.
This award was a great surprise. It entailed happiness and apprehension. Happiness because we’re one big team—comprising colleagues, friends and family that directly or indirectly support the work—celebrating. Apprehension because I foresaw that the award would mean an overload of work with interviews and other obligations, but it went well in the end.
Interview conducted on March 24, 2020, by José Reis, coordinator of TMP’s communication office
The joint presentation of Guintche (2010), Jaguar (2016) and Mal – Embriaguez Divina (2020) is a unique opportunity to highlight elements that are common and unique to each of those works. Despite the lapse of time between Guintche and Jaguar, for example, I still deeply relate to those pieces, and I keep going back to them, updating them and transforming them even if almost inconspicuously. My relationship with my pieces in general has nothing to do with seniority, but rather with topicality, that is to say I’m interested in intense, strained, strong relations, at times mysterious, counterintuitive, etc. The way the Greeks figuratively depicted their myths in pots, for instance, is very contemporary in my view, regardless of having been invented twenty centuries ago. This is an invitation/challenge we’re happy to answer.
Mal – Embriaguez Divina is one of the pieces presented in the scope of this focus. It is based on the notion(s) of evil as embodied in different entities and aspects, which is a topic that somehow seems to cross all your work. What was your starting point in this project and what does the final object you’ll present to the audience look like?
Despite the fact that it has been clear for many that I work on evil, since they consider it to be a topic that crosses my work, I find it curious that for me it has been a great revelation.
One day, I was at home, and I spotted the spine of a book on a shelf whose title feature the word “evil”: Literature and Evil, by Georges Bataille. I immediately felt the word summarised several of my loose thoughts. And thus appeared title and topic.
What will evil look like as a piece I don’t know yet. There are some ideas, mainly two important ones: that of tribune, from where one sees best (and is also best seen); and that of court, where justice is discussed. Those are two starting points for the team to work, knowing that in the course of rehearsals the pieces claim the way they’re headed or even self-determination. The several developments taking place along the way are what fundamentally defines the nature of the pieces. A specific element of this project is that there are actors from Munich’s Kammerspiele in the group, which truly poses a new challenge.
Before Mal, there was Canine Jaunâtre 3 (2018), created for the Batsheva Dance Company, from Telavive, Israel, which was a deeply changing experience. On the one hand, given the intrinsic relationship between artistic project and the sociopolitical context where it was carried out. On the other hand, due to the abrupt way it stopped touring, that is to say the silencing, censoring and blocking at a time when several theatres and festivals wanted to present it to the public. Only a few were able to watch it. It was a very intense and accelerated working process that was suddenly and unexpectedly halted, since the interest of the programmers was immediate, like walling a wild horse and making its legs stop.
The research process and creative work behind Canine was accompanied by moments of awe, shocks, and absurd and tragic realisations, and so it became impossible to narrow the experience down to a single piece. And thus emerge Cattivo, an installation with shelves with music scores, Mal – Embriaguez Divina and (un)common ground, a multidisciplinary programme that we’re developing in partnership with another company, curators, artists, lecturers and editors, and that is scheduled for the 2020-21 season.
At some point, I spontaneously identified the absurd and tragic realisations with the Devil, that evil being from our imaginary with which we associate ideas such as metamorphosis, features that are morally and ethically negative, deadly, disease-related, and also body fluids such as pus and so on. In my eyes a possible embodiment of evil was forming, evil engineering, the dirty, the deliberate mistake, a seemingly immune and unpunished machine with virulent properties such as spread, destruction and control, before which a great feeling of helplessness was being outlined. Such vision may be the price to pay once you’ve descended to Hell guided by researchers, artists and historians. Such a well sheltered and concealed Hell. Once you’ve seen it, that sight sticks to your “Achilles tendon” and won’t come loose. And the same goes, perhaps, for evil…
In a way there are certain common features to all your works, which those who follow your career can recognise. Which ones would you highlight as being more present or showing a more authorial nature and enabling a direct identification of a piece signed by you?
Characters and fiction. Or images and phantasy. Work elements follow one another as if it were a dream, establishing precise, intense, sometimes contradictory relations among them, lending themselves to multiple readings. As they combine, coexist and penetrate one another, they provide the pieces with new paths or end up choking them. At times both.
Musicality and rhythm. Both performance—gestural work—, and the chaining of situations on stage, that is to say the structures of the pieces, pursue specific musicalities and rhythms. More often than not they partly set possible meanings to the pieces. I would say they play an important dramaturgical role. Pleasure. On stage, the performer chases the childish principle of the game: on the one hand, to “pretend” under the eye of the audience; on the other hand, to find the manifold sides to the piece that he himself weaved and keeps on weaving, and that are only revealed to him as the audience projects their own images on what they watch, listen and feel.
As an acknowledgement of your career, the Venice Biennale, one of the most important cultural events in the world, decided to present you with the Silver Lion Award in 2018, so as to appreciate a career dedicated to performing arts, which goes beyond geographical and cultural boundaries. What’s it like to receive such an important award and to have the Venice Biennale describing you as someone with an “electrifying presence” and a “Dionysian power”?
It was a great honour to receive this award. The power of Dionysius is that of illusion, mystery, bewitchment, of seeing what’s not there, feeling what can’t be touched, believing and wanting… That is all I look for when I go to the theatre to watch a performance. That is also what I look for with my work as a creative process and with the performance. Whether I’m able to or not is another matter…
In order to bewitch, one needs to put reality on hold, wither away everyday life and its rules, laws and worries. And only then truly arises a geography of free movement, a land without borders, a space where the senses, emotion, reason and the imaginary penetrate one another very close to the dream universe.
This award was a great surprise. It entailed happiness and apprehension. Happiness because we’re one big team—comprising colleagues, friends and family that directly or indirectly support the work—celebrating. Apprehension because I foresaw that the award would mean an overload of work with interviews and other obligations, but it went well in the end.
Interview conducted on March 24, 2020, by José Reis, coordinator of TMP’s communication office
© Nuno Ferreira Santos
