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Polishing up an
old gem
Jan Fabre’s classic “The Power of Theatrical
Madness” at Vienna’s ImPulsTanz. Also a kind
of theatrical quiz, four and a half hours long.
BARBARA FREITAG
N
obody is in any rush to enter
the
airless
Burgtheater,
because once they do they’ll
be stuck there for 4½ hours. The
performers in Jan Fabre’s troupe
Troubleyn are the only ones
already there, standing motionless
with their backs to the audience
dressed in black costumes. The
audience
gradually
become
impatient for the action to start,
but Jan is in no hurry. He sits at
the light control console and
enjoys allowing the impatience to
build a little longer. And so we
are already in the midst of Jan
Fabre’s
theatre
of
the
unreasonable.
Gradually the scene changes,
the row of actors breaks up and
soon nostalgic Fabre fans are
applauding. After all, “The Power
of Theatrical Madness” is now 28
years old. It stems from the
heyday of post-dramatic theatre,
being devoid of a plot, and was a
success right from the start. Now
he is staging this new production
with a young cast.
Soon
the
actors
begin
repeatedly yelling dates such as
“1888 – Chekov’s Seagull’ or
“1928 – Brecht’s Threepenny
Opera”. Couples have formed,
and the men shove the women off
the stage. They clamber back up,
only one of them does not
manage it, being prevented by her
partner because she cannot
answer his question “1876?”. A
fight begins, he chases and then
hits her. That is the cue for
outrage from some politically
correct members of the audience:
“Unbelievable! Disgraceful!
That’s not culture!” While
another responds: “Go home
then!”
After a long drawn-out 30
minutes the tension is finally
released as she answers: “Ring of
the Nibelungs”. A new scene
commences, with two men
stripping naked and posing like
Greek statues. Golden crowns are
placed on their heads and in the
midst of the Physical Theatre they
begin to dance a tango with each
other to the music of Wagner.
Nudity has always been a Fabre
theme, and all of the actors
regularly undress and dress again,
slowly and unerotically. An
element of comedy is also
present, for instance when the
actors incessantly pant like dogs,
provoking roars of laughter in the
audience.
You need to be willing to miss
some of the action, because there
are no official breaks. However,
people are free to leave the
auditorium for a drink and return
whenever they please.
The piece ended to enthusiastic
acclaim from the remaining
audience members, and there
were plenty of them, with Jan
Fabre himself perhaps most
enthusiastic of all in his applause
of his early work and the valiant
cast. Make sure you get a good
night’s sleep before tackling
Fabre’s next production, “This is
theatre like it was to be expected
and foreseen”: it goes on for a
good eight hours.
Jan Fabre/Troubleyn: „This is theatre ...
21 July 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., 22 July 7 p.m.
to 3 a.m. MuseumsQuartier Halle G
Tickets: 01 51444 - 5416
www.impulstanz.com
FRIDAY, 20 JULY 2012
CULTURE / COMMUNICATION
DER STANDARD
25
Kisses and bites and
dancing with Penthesilea
Jan Fabre stages a new
production of The Power of
Theatrical Madness with
his company Troubleyn: in
the best sense a young and
rebellious piece at the
Burgtheater during
ImPulsTanz.
Helmut Ploebst
Vienna
– Laying bare the
animalistic in human beings, which
Belgian artist, director and
choreographer Jan Fabre took as
the leitmotiv for his second major
stage work The Power of
Theatrical Madness, is a dramatic
tradition going back to Heinrich
von Kleist, whose Amazon queen
Penthesilea fatally bit her lover
Achilles. Fabre’s four-hour piece
was first staged in 1984 as an event
at the Biennale in Venice. Now
ImPulsTanz 2012 has seen the first
staging of this new production at
the Burgtheater. Perhaps it is just a
coincidence that the central piece in
the ImPulsTanz ballet gala soon
also at the Burgtheater is founded
on the same image as Fabre’s work.
The story line of Jiri Kylián’s 2004
ballet Il faut qu'une porte ... draws
its inspiration from Jean-Honore
Fragonard’s painting Le Verrou (The
Bolt), and the series of projections
accompanying Fabre’s piece, which
first saw the light of day precisely
two decades earlier, begins with this
very scene.
Fragonard’s work, painted in the
1770s, has a second title: Le Viol
(The Rape). If we now contemplate
what Fabre and Kylián respectively
have each made of this ambivalent
image, we are given an excellent
Jan Fabre’s The Power of Theatrical Madness, in the background Francois-Édouard Picot’s L'Amour et Psyché.
opportunity to contrast the different
treatments of the theme by as perhaps I seemed.”
lists of historic plays and art works sit face to face, slapping each other
contemporary dance and in ballet. Fabre’s 15 dancers intrude upon the from the 19th century through to the as the woman sings a passage from
As Fabre’s piece begins we hear a relationship between Achilles and 1980s, not omitting Jan Fabre’s own Bizet’s Carmen. Clearly a reference
distraught Penthesilea: “So it was a Penthesilea. Through this metaphor 1982 piece This is theatre like it was to
the
1977
performance
mistake. Küsse [kisses] and Bisse Faber portrays the violent love to be expected and foreseen, also Light/Dark by Marina Abramovic
[bites],/ They rhyme, for one who between art and society on a bare soon
to
be
staged
during and Ulay. It works. By stretching
truly loves with all her heart / can stage illuminated by naked bulbs. In ImPulsTanz. Scenes from the work time, with juxtaposed dramatic
easily mistake them.”
one scene, a male dancer kicks one stick in the memory. For instance, strands and an orgy of repetition,
In Kleist’s play, before killing of the female dancers off the stage two naked men are crowned and then the 26-year-old Jan Fabre opened
herself Penthesilea kneels before into the auditorium and will not let dance a tango to classical music. Or, up new theatrical possibilities back
Achilles' body: “By Diana, it was a her back up. “1876!”, he yells against a backdrop of Jacques-Louis in 1984. In the best possible sense
mere slip of the tongue, / Because I repeatedly. After a while protests are David’s pre-revolutionary painting this work is young and rebellious,
am not mistress of my hasty lips / heard
from
the
Burgtheater The Oath of the Horatii (1784), the and its fragmented fractiousness
But now I tell you clearly what I audience: “That’s enough!” But the dancers sit, stare silently out at the continues to provoke today.
truly intended: / It was this, my confrontation does not end until the auditorium and smoke cigarettes.
lover, and nothing else.” (She kisses female dancer eventually vouchsafes You could have heard a pin drop.
him.” She provokes outrage when that 1876 was the year when But by then performers and audience
she adds: “See here: when I hung Wagner’s Ring was first staged in had long since become passionately
from your throat, / I truly did so Bayreuth.
intertwined.
word for word / I was not so crazy
There follows the yelling of long
A little later a man and a woman
The power of madness: Fabre shocks and intrigues at the Burg
ImPulsTanz. Jan Fabre is guesting at the contemporary dance festival with two marathon length early works. In The Power Of Theatrical Madness
the Belgian brings excessive violence and some humorous moments to the stage. The audience is divided. The performers are excellent.
BY ISABELLA WALLNOFER
Jan Fabre is a master of drastic means. He
leaves nothing and nobody untouched –
including the audience, many of whom
walked out of the Burgtheater in outrage
during the ImPulsTanz production, The
Power of Theatrical Madness. And certainly
not the performers, who exerted themselves
to the point of exhaustion, pushing each
other to the pain barrier while also exposing
themselves to ridicule. For four and a half
hours.
What was staged for us there was very
entertaining during some parts, in others
hard to bear. In both cases it was
deliberately intensified by the continual,
concentrated repetition of the individual
scenes, thus giving more weight and impact
to the shocking and humorous moments
alike. In one long scene a male performer
forcibly prevents a female performer from
returning to the stage. As he yanks her by the
arms, kicks her off the stage down towards
the startled people sitting in the front row,
then drags her along the edge of the stage, he
repeatedly yells out the question: “1876?”.
After prolonged torment, for audience and
performer alike, she finally answers the
question (it is the year in which Richard
Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs was
first staged), and only then is she allowed to
rejoin the others. This is Fabre’s homage to
Wagner, the man who made the total work of
art 1 very much his own.
A total artwork for the eyes and ears
Fabre’s piece is also a total work of art: onto
the back wall of the stage he projects giant
details from historical paintings depicting
myths and legends. Through the charisma of
his performers he continually creates new
associations, from juggling entertainers to
stern museum attendants, vigorously kissing
lovers and slavering dogs. He shocks with the
force and long drawn-out nature of the
destruction (by the end the auditorium is only
half full), is amusing the next moment with
grotesque acts and scenes reminiscent of
Monty Python. Musical quotations from
Wagner, Strauss, Schoeck and Bizet are
intermingled with the minimalism of Wim
Mertens.
1
German = Gesamtkunstwerk. High-brow English
texts on aesthetics etc. actually use the German
word, but it’s highly unlikely it would occur in a
newspaper review.
The final scene of Jan Fabre’s work: it too is a
demonstration of power.
Fabre uses powerful images to explore the
issue of power: the Kaiser is honoured, the
dogs must obey, a woman is beaten on her
bare backside until she yells the answer to
the question “1982?” (“This is theatre like it
was to be expected and foreseen”), the title
of another Fabre piece being put on this
weekend during the ImPulsTanz festival, this
time lasting all of eight hours. Fabre is using
this restaging of his two early works as
preparation for the 24-hour marathon theatre
evening entitled Mount Olympus, which he
has planned for 2014. The idea is to
familiarise this new generation of performers
with his work, since they were not around in
the 1980s when the original production of
The Power of Theatrical Madness created
such a stir. Fabre was said to have blasted “a
crater in the theatrical world of his times”, to
have laid a milestone [in theatre history]. It
was certainly Fabre’s big break, at any rate.
Then and now, Fabre divides the
audience. Some vote with their feet, while
others immerse themselves in the spectacle
and become carried away by the excessive
force of the performance. Fabre demands
everything of the performers, they are
required to dress and undress at regular
intervals, run until they drop and submit to
beatings.
The
audience
responded
enthusiastically. And rightly so!
This is theatre like it was to be expected and
foreseen: 21 July (9 p.m.-5 a.m.), 22 July (7
p.m.-3
a.m.),
MQ,
Halle
G;
www.impulstanz.com