Breaking Ice
By Alexis Soloski
Lokal Festival #1
Reykjavik, Iceland
In 1818, the travel writer Ebenezer Henderson
declared, "Reykjavik is unquestionably the worst place in which
to spend the winter in Iceland. The tone of society is the lowest
that can be imagined [and] it is devoid of every source of intellectual
gratification." Well, that certainly hasn't been the case for
some time (and likely wasn't even in Henderson's day), but Reykjavik
is looking to increase its winter quotient of intellectual gratification
with the launch of Lokal, an international festival of art and
performance. The inaugural version of Lokal, held in Reykjavik
from March 5-10, 2008, combined Icelandic works with two from
New York and one from Paris.
Launching a truly international arts festival
poses the sorts of financial, artistic and logistical challenges
that demand hordes of interns, scouts, producers, and grant writers.
The United States, a country with exponentially more resources
than Iceland, only boasts a handful them--Lincoln Center Festival,
BAM Next Wave, Portland's Time-Based Arts, and the more recent
Under the Radar, plus occasional events organized by universities.
In its first year, at least, Lokal seemed to be struggling to
define itself, attract interested companies, and offer the sort
of programming that would appeal to local theatergoers and arts
tourists.
W.H. Auden, who visited Iceland in 1936,
wrote, "A small country like Iceland should be an ideal place
for a really live drama--as in Ireland. This depends solely on
writers of whom there are plenty--and a few enthusiastic amateurs
in a small room. To start by building an enormous state theatre
which you can't afford to finish is starting at the wrong end."
In fact, Iceland developed its own theater somewhat late. It bred
a few dramatists in the 19th century, but the National Theater
(the building Auden dismissed) did not see completion until 1950
and the country could not boast a professional theater company
until 1963. Nor did a drama school exist until 1950. But Iceland
has made up for lost time, and quickly, too. Its National Theater
stages an impressive mix of new and classic European plays and
new Icelandic dramas, as well as musical and children's theater.
In a country with a population of 280,000, the various theaters
sell an impressive 400,000 seats.
Following a recent visit, the Guardian
critic Michael Billington announced that Iceland "has one of the
most innovative theatres in Europe. Like the country itself, it
still awaits our full, amazed discovery." At the Lokal Festival,
that discovery couldn't quite be made. The four Icelandic performances
could hardly stand in for all the nation's theater--especially
as the shows varied in their modes, ambitions, and accomplishments.
(Yet, they could boast some strange correspondences, namely the
liberal use of smoke machines. A nod to the misty country?) And
a few notable productions--an acclaimed version of Ivanov
at the National and an adaptation of Lars Moodyson's Together
by the Vesturport Company among them--which were running concurrently
in Reykjavik did not feature in the festival. But the Lokal shows,
the Icelandic ones at least, did not seem strikingly innovative.
The
festival-going began with Badstofan, a play by Hugleikur
Dagsson, best known in Iceland as a cartoonist "of dark and disgusting
jokes." The term badstofan refers to the "communal living
room" around which rural life centered, even as late as the 20th
century. (Iceland's national museum offers a re-creation of a
typical badstofan, a dark, wood-paneled room in which
the farm inhabitants ate, worked, and slept.) In the course of
the play, this particular living room saw multiple murders, rapes,
suicides, and one rather terrifying whale penis.
In the audience talkback following, the
director Stefan Jonsson explained that Icelanders tend to romanticize
the idea of the badstofan, viewing it as the symbol of
a jolly rural past without the complications of modern life. The
goal of the script, Jonsson explained, was to strip away that
romantic myth. But by representing the badstofan as the
scene of so very much corruption, the play merely substitutes
one myth for another. And though the script thinks itself quite
daring, it may not surprise those familiar with J.M. Synge's peasant
plays or Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths. (Apparently,
it has angered some local audience members, who do not want to
think themselves descended from such goings on.) But Badstofan
did offer some striking imagery, courtesy of director Jonsson,
and a rich and strange soundscape designed by the band Flis and
played on instruments crafted from the fixtures of peasant life--spinning
wheels, threshing machines, etc.
The next night brought another Icelandic
production entitled Othello, Desdemona, and Iago, a distillation
of Shakepeare's tragedy. In what seemed a kind of theatrical atavism,
a return to 1960s experimentalism, the production featured an
Othello played by a dancer, Desdemona played by a deaf actress
who uses sign language, and Iago by Hilmir Snaer Guonason, a speaking
actor who is one of Iceland's most sought after performers. The
source play clearly emphasizes problems in representation and
communication, but the production appeared to simplify these difficulties
rather than complicate them, while shortening the play's narrative
arc and emotional reach.
Much
more affecting was the Paris company Philippe Quesne/ Vivarium
Studio's L'Effet de Serge. This hour-long performance
concerned a man named Serge (Gaetan Vourc'h) who lives alone and
spends his free time creating low-tech special effects. Each Sunday
evening, he invites friends to come over, have a drink, and witness
one of his spectacles, such as "Luminous Effect on Music by Wagner"
or "Laser Effect on Music by John Cage." A tall, exceedingly gentle
presence, Vourc'h shows us how everyday objects--car headlights,
shoes, remote control toys--can contain the seeds of magic. At
the production's end, Vourc'h announced the company's next project,
La Melancolie des dragons, which will premiere later
this year in Austria. Perhaps Under the Radar or the Lincoln Center
Festival will have the good sense to bring it to New York as well.
Melancholy, of dragons or otherwise, absented
itself in Her & Nu (Here and Now), by the Icelandic group
Sokkabandid, a performance satirizing fame and tabloid journalism.
Taking the form of an evening news and entertainment program,
with text lifted directly from such television programs and from
celebrity magazines, the piece examines how reputation is created
and how contemporary news media equalize puff pieces and actual
tragedies. (It's a textbook example of Philip Auslander's idea
of a "resistant" theater, one that examines how meaning and influence
aremade.) These aren't necessarily new ideas, but they seemed
expertly enacted by the cast and, even without benefit of supertitles,
often chilling.
The Talking Tree on the other
hand, featuring Icelandic native daughter Erna Omarsdottir and
Belgian lad Lieven Dousselare, was much too silly to chill. An
able dancer, Omarsdottir muddied her movement work with fairy
tales about girls in love with goldfish, a young man with a multifunctional
penis, and a lonely sock who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist.
Omarsdottir created some gorgeous images--using her body, gold
paint, and a large number of apples--and Dousselare supplied some
haunting music, but they couldn't overcome the preciousness of
the text.
New York brought some of its local favorites
to Lokal: Richard Maxwell's The New York City Players traveled
with Ode to the Man Who Kneels and Nature Theater of
Oklahoma came with No Dice. Though the festival organizers
had some difficulty finding an audience for these shows (many
performances played to half-empty rooms), the students of Reykjavik's
acting conservatory seemed incredibly moved and excited by the
latter piece (and by L'Effet de Serge as well), many
of them attending two and three times. As part of Lokal, the students
also organized an open day at their school. In the manner of most
student work, the pieces on display were messy, and often loud,
but they all betrayed an energy and sophistication that promises
very well for the next generation of Icelandic theater and the
coming years of the Lokal festival. Auden's dream of "a really
live drama for Iceland" may well come true.
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