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.