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Wchicken Willem Dafoe took the role at the creative director of the Venice theater biennale last year, he formed a program around his passions. Dafoe chose the theater industry that made him a young actor and took to the arcane stage and instead became successful. two written by Richard Foreman which involved the declaration of non-sequitur notes from index card lists. It all seemed so old-fashioned, so pointless.
This year, the 54th edition, is thankfully very different. Dafoe’s program is broad and outward-looking, with authentic values and an interesting combination of theatrical traditions. The line extends from Europe to Indonesia (Yusril Katil’s Under the Volcano, among other things) and India (Sharmila Biswas’s Mischief Dance). There is a clear hybridity in shows such as Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen Noh Othellowhich mixes Noh and Shakespeare, and Christos Stergioglou and Alex Drakos Ktistakis’ Cries, which combines theater and musical mythology, with contemporary themes and ancient Greek drama.
The only thing of honor in this year’s program is its theme, Alter Native, which according to Dafoe is about “the encounter between cultures – the moment when what is familiar starts to talk to you and becomes a catalyst for change”. If that sounds highfalutin and abstruse on paper, it has the truth of purpose in practice.
A recurring theme emerges from Dafoe’s show: giving voice to the marginalized and marginalized. Emma Dante, the famous Sicilian playwright who has created works featuring exiles and socialites, will receive this year’s Golden Lion for her lifetime achievement, which is her bold voice.
And Davide Iodice’s latest creation combines this preoccupation in the biggest ways. Iodice is an Italian playwright who has previously created plays in a mental hospital, a women’s prison and a homeless shelter; his new work, Promemoria, is the most interesting in this year’s list and is a sure measure.
It takes the audience inside San Giobbe, a nursing home Venice. We walk its corridors and interact with 21 residents who have dementia or Alzheimer’s or are no longer self-sufficient. There are caretakers by their side and nine actors who play around them. We listen to their stories and watch them dance.
It is the result of a year-long consultation process and a very compassionate work – even if it is unstable as Alexander Zeldin’s play Carewhich is in a nursing home, currently at the Young Vic in London.
When asked about what he likes about success and hope, Iodice says that all the pain is present in unspeakable ways: “What struck me most about these amazing actors was their amazing connection with life, the strong desire to be with them even in the greatest danger – the strength that gives strength. on the road, in the smell, the endless sound of using medical equipment, in the bells that call for help, in the constant movement of doctors and nurses, in the daily life of this place, yet, even in this place, people can maintain beauty his, even this beauty always pleases me.
The cry of Stergioglou and Ktistakis interrupts the voices of refugees and those who have been enslaved or displaced for a long time, from Hecuba after the sacking of Troy to today. It is mainly expressed through music and performed by six musicians in the open-air Teatro Verde, which has the appearance of a theater and is located on the upper island. It comes to life in his angry song about how refugees flee their homes reluctantly, desperately, only to be met with hatred and discrimination in the West. “You have to understand: no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than land, no one wants refugee camps or searches,” said one singer in his most uproarious song.
Miyagi gives voice to the Shakespearean villain in Mugen Noh Othello, who revises the play to place Desdemona, Othello’s murdered wife, in front of him. A Japanese artist who left several works in the West, he uses the Mugen-Noh theater tradition, which began in the 13th century.
Miyagi explains that the protagonist of Mugen-Noh is always a constant spirit in a recurring story. The purpose of this fascinating ceremony is to release this tormented person from purgatory, through the self-telling of the story: “Telling stories helps them end their suffering.” For Miyagi, this is what connects the Noh tradition with the spirits of Shakespeare and their desire to bring back plays like Hamlet.
There is a classic Noh song with drums and percussion as Othello tells, including his martial hero. But the scene belongs to Desdemona’s ghost – a display of constant anger and her murder at the hands of her husband who accuses her of an infidelity she did not commit. Since they have no words in Shakespeare’s original text, this revision completely changes the play. It was no longer about a badass war hero and the awakening of his cruel jealousy through Iago’s treachery but about a faithful woman and a distraught soul suffering from injustice and trapped in her evil limbo. He, not she, is his sad heart here.
Miyagi is not the only one who raises the dead. Dorcy Rugamba’s Letter to the Absent is based on his book Hewa Rwanda, dedicated to his family who died in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Theater he is a medium where the dead can be reborn, he says, and says that he wanted to bring back the dead in a way that was not explained by their killer. “Murder is double murder: first it kills in the body, but then their existence can disappear in the way you tell their story.” If you look at movies and books (about genocide), the violence is so dramatic that it is the killer’s story. For me it is important to find a way to tell the victims their whole story. the horrible circumstances of their death.”
There are several things that do a lot of work. In Iodice’s piece, there are more than 30 audience members for each play who move through the rooms and gardens of the house. They are interested people who are invited to an art workshop to hear what people have been making or to sit among a group of old women who serve tea and reminisce about their past lives and their families.
Less so than Mario Banushi’s Ragada, the first part of a silent trilogy about family death, memory and funeral rituals. Banushi, a Greek playwright of the Albanian tradition, is considered by many to represent a new form of Greek theater and is the winner of this year’s Silver Lion at the biennale. Three series, called Romance Familiare (combining Goodbye, Lindita and Taverna Miresia together with the first part), are shown simultaneously during the festival. The Ragada takes place in the family’s dining room, with the audience sitting in a space that hugs the room, some on the floor around the actors and surrounded by the highly emotional drama taking place in the intimate space.
Continuing on the list is a six-hour long production of Samuel Beckett’s How It Is. Audiences have the option to watch continuously or take a break in the middle of a day. It is a word-for-word version of Beckett’s three-part novel, originally published in French in 1961. It is considered a difficult thing to understand, it is written in verse without punctuation marks and it has only one person in the middle of a muddy place who hears several voices inside and outside.
Although it is not part of Dafoe’s biennale, it fits the context and depth of his program. A collaboration between Gare St Lazare Ireland and Berggruen Arts & Culture, an “artistic event” is taking place above Palazzo Diedo. It is directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett, with a design collaboration with artist Michael Craig Martin, and stars Stephen Dillane alongside Conor Lovett. “It’s very word of mouth – it just hits the stage,” says Hegarty Lovett. It has been 10 years since he was produced by Gare St Lazare, which will be working on Waiting for Godot with Gary Oldman next year.
With this biennale, Dafoe completes the minimum two years required for a professional director. The question now is whether to sign up two or more. It looks, judging by this year’s offerings, as if he’s stepping in. Look at this empty space?
