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Monsters of Reality MONSTERS MONSTERS O FO FR R E E A A L L I T I Y T Y A PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL ON ‘DRAMATURGIES OF THE REAL’ A PERFORMANCE festival ON ‘Dramaturgies OF THE REAL’ 22 - 25 mars 2012 DramatiKKENS HUS Siri Forberg The Danish National School of has a background in performing Performing Art - Continuing Education in different kinds of theatre and Since 2003 the Continuing Education performance. She now works as a has provided knowledge, inspiration dramaturge and producer, in addition and new skills to the professional to pedagogical theatre-work. She theatre and dance environments. The Published by initiated and curated the Monsters Continuing Education is constantly Siri Forberg (Oslo) and of Reality festival in March 2012, and looking for and introducing new The Danish National School of a follow-up to the festival, which tendencies, methods and ways Performings Arts – Continuing is currently being planned, is due of working for the benefit of the Education (Copenhagen) to take place in Oslo in 2014. Her Danish performing arts scene. The dramaturgical work includes En Department is striving to build a bridge Edited by Folkefiende in Oslo directed by Rimini between theory and practice and Siri Forberg and Miriam Frandsen Prototkoll (Haug/Wetzel) for the Ibsen create platforms for interdisciplinary Graphic Design/Layout festival at the Nationaltheatre in 2012. collaboration. Managed by a Timon Botez Her work as a performer includes Burn small team, Continuing Education baby Burn by Karen Røise Kielland develops and hosts courses in close Photos by (Blood for Roses) and Punch Drunk by collaboration with other performing Chris Erichsen (unless otherwise stated) choreographer Wendy Houstoun (DV8, arts organisations, artists and The Printed by Forced Entertainment). Siri considers National School of Performing Art– as Livonia Print, Latvia, 2013 the ‘playing’ quality of theatre as a well as developing its network with key factor in enabling reflection and collaborators nationally and abroad on All rights reserved. interaction on the question of human an ongoing basis. Material from this publication may only existence. She is keen to facilitate be reproduced with acknowledgement of events where this is the primary focus. www.scenekunstskolen- the source. efteruddannelsen.dk Miriam Frandsen Festival initiated and developed by Siri holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies Forberg in collaboration with The Danish (2003). She works as a freelance National School of Performing Arts – dramaturg, most recently on War— Continuing Education, Dramatikkens you should have been there (Lukas hus in Oslo, and the Norwegian Arts Matthaei 2013), Sidste Skrig & Council. Spejl—Hvem er køn? (Tali Razgá, This publication supported by the 2012 & 2011), and DK Ultra (Caroline Norwegian Arts Council and The Danish McSweeney, 2012). Besides being National School of Performing Arts – the dramaturgic consultant at Continuing Education CaféTeatret’s Summer Readings since 2005, she has also been coordinator Copyright © 2013 and dramaturg at the Royal Danish Siri Forberg Theatre on the project Nye Stemmer The Danish National School of concerning new writing (2008–2009). Performing Arts-Continuing Education Since 2009 Miriam has also been the Individual texts, the authors President of the Society of Danish Dramaturgs. Miriam teaches at The Typeset in Arnhem and Bulo Danish National School of Performing Arts on subjects such as ‘new ISBN 978-82-999325-0-9 playwrights’, ‘post-dramatic theatre’, ISBN 978-87-994225-1-7 ‘devising’ and ‘site specific’. Miriam has also been engaged as a Special Consultant by The Danish Arts Agency in 2011. Since 2004, Miriam Frandsen has been employed as Project Manager and Developer at The Danish National School of Performing Arts’ Department for Continuing Education. ContentS FridaY 23 March SaturdaY 24 March SundaY 25 March ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY False awaKening RealitY ’S referents: page 7 by Carol Martin by Trine Falch forms of the “real” across page 27 page 75 the arts Preface by Shannon Jackson as real as it gets Riding the Monster High on realitY page 123 by Siri Forberg by Pia Maria Roll by Toril Goksøyr & Camilla Martens page 9 page 41 page 81 PrometheUS IN Athens by Rimini Protokoll(Haug/Wetzel) Introduction Down with Profession! Dialectics of the document: page 137 The Monsters of RealitY by Ole Johan Skjelbred Rhetoric and counter- by Siri Forberg & Miriam Frandsen page 49 rhetoric in “Almenrausch” ReallY fantastical page 13 a Radio Hearing by Tore Vagn Lid by Bjørn Rasmussen The rise and fall of page 89 page 143 ThursdaY 22 March StorKunstsolteddYstaten Questions After by Julian Blaue (Dis-)Believe. in search of Program Manifest 2083 page 53 A lost realitY or PlaYing page 150 by Christian Lollike with illusion page 19 Staging authenticitY by Nikolaus Müller-Schöll by Imanuel Schipper page 99 Point BlanK page 59 by Edit Kaldor Logobi 02 page 25 CMNN SNS PRJCT by Gintersdorfer/Klaßen by Kalauz/Schick page 119 page 71 CoupÈ DecalÈ Afterparty Black Box venue page 121 4 Monsters OF REALITY Monsters OF REALITY 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We want to thank all those who participated in the festival for joining us and also to thank everyone who presented their work at the festival, and for contributing to this publication. A big thanks goes to the Norwegian Opera & Ballet for letting us present, at very short notice, one of the performances—LOGOBI 02 by Gintersdorfer/ Klaßen—at their venue. Thanks also to artistic director Jon Refsdal Moe, Hedda Abildsnes and Sara Wegge at Black Box theatre for letting us host the afterparty at their venue, and in cooperation with Black Box’ festival Oslo International Theaterfestival. We want to thank Kirstine Finneman and Nigel Ritchie for their great help with proofreading this text. We want to thank Chris Erichsen for providing us with photos from the festival. We want to thank Timon Botez for the layout. Not only has he taken great care in creating a visually stringent and focused ‘frame’ for the diverse ‘attacks on reality’ of all these texts, but he has also been patient and perceptive towards their content. A big thanks goes to the people at Dramatikkens hus for helping with all the logistics, and to Marit Grimstad Eggen in particular. A very special thanks to Kai Johnsen, former leader of Dramatikkens hus. His knowledge of, and thinking around what text and theatre can be, turned Dramatikkens hus into a dynamic and vital arena for practitioners of all kinds in the field. 6 Monsters OF REALITY Monsters OF REALITY 7 Preface AS REAL AS IT GETS by Siri Forberg Dramaturgies Of The Real This is a publication containing material produced by international scholars and artists during the “Monsters of Reality” performance festival at Dramatikkens hus in Oslo in March 2012. The festival was a four-day long combination of performances, lectures, artist talks and panel-discussions, and the festival aimed to present the participants with different notions of “Dramaturgies of the real”. This refers to an artistic strategy that has been growing in importance once again. For the last decade or so, the theatre has been bombed with the real and concrete, and challenging audiences to reflect on how they perceive everyday realities. The focus was not on whether this strategy should be branded ‘documentary theatre’, ‘reality theatre’, ‘verbatim theatre’, or even ‘new documentary theatre’. We did however want to encourage reflection around this tendency, so we asked the simple question of ‘how to stage reality and why’. Theatre will always seek a version of truth, a sense of realness. This search for ‘the real’ has taken different routes through history; Ibsen, for example, wanted to write in a “truthful reality language” and Stanislavsky strived to instill “organic principles of acting” in the student actor in order to be able to act what’s “real and true” on stage. The perception of what is real will of course differ depending on one’s position—as the ‘speaking’ artist, or the ‘listening’ spectator. In our post(post)modern contemporary world, it seems problematic to point to reality without framing it as ‘reality’. There still exists a strong tendency within our society to develop different strategies to grasp this everyday, but still complex, notion of reality. We witness different cultural phenomena that express strategies to (re)present it, evoking a kind of “reality-effect and -affect” within the spectator—and we are seduced by a surface of authenticity that somehow surrounds products and phenomena. There exists a “hunger for reality” in our contemporary world. The different ways in which the new documentary theatre has been searching for methods of drawing closer to the immediate social reality can be seen as part of this tendency. It is a positioning away from a kind of illusionistic realism and at the same time, part of an institutional criticism. In this way it connects to other historical documentary theatre-projects. 8 Monsters OF REALITY Monsters OF REALITY 9 The discourse of reality theatre Reality is not enough With Monsters of Reality, we wanted to point to the phenomena also The dramaturgical strategies of staging ‘the real’, or of framing our by looking at the language that surrounds this theatre of the real. The social reality, thereby claiming that “all the world’s a stage”, are diverse theoretical discourse surrounding reality theatre shares this concern by and ambiguous. The one thing all these varied strategies might have in questioning the notion of whether, and how, reality—the Real— is what common is their activation of a certain kind of ‘spectator-effect’—or is really ‘present’ in this theatre. rather, that the effect of these strategies is to create an affect within the As we experienced, the concept of ‘reality’ is highly ambiguous. spectator. The use of documentary elements, whether in theatre, film, On the one hand, we have its everyday connotations—everything that literature, or arts in general, induces a certain way of connecting to our surrounds our daily existence, from the physical presence of objects social reality—it creates destabilizing images within the spectator’s mind to constant media sound bites.
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