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Posts from the ‘Inceleme / Review’ Category

Oct 21

Sanja Mitrovic, Will You Ever Be Happy Again

Nóra Bükki Gálla

In films it is always Germans playing the bad guys and they always lose in the end – that is the stereotype director and stage performer Sanja Mitrovic starts her documentary piece with. Following her narrative we enter a world of personal and collective memory to re-think roles, cliches and sympathies.

Mitrovic finished her philology studies in Serbia to move to the Netherlands where she continues to make theatre performances with a strong social and emotional awareness. Her stage is a micro-world of pressing cultural and political issues that can be regarded in a broader international context.

Will You Ever Be Happy Again is presented as a collection of childhood games revived; the two players on stage (Jochen Stechmann is there to show us the German side of the coin) finish playing Partisans versus Nazis to indulge in a series of role games. We get to see Mitrovic’s childhood drawings of bombs, fires and victorious Yugoslavian heroes, followed by what seems to be a Zen teaching but turns out to be a fake story glorifying the people’s Great Leader, Tito. (He is living ‘in the heart of the trees’, so how could he not live in the hearts of his people?) The episodes of a Serbian girl’s life are completed by a German personal history of communist-killer grandfather and a family document of Arian origin. (‘You never know.’) The absurdity of it all doesn’t stop the two players from following their individual patterns of blame, anger and remorse – with occasional flickers of happiness, when bad memories seem like a joke, something to be dismissed with a wave.

A variety of objects are used to assist us on this guided tour of recent history: the small statue-head of Tito, devaluated bank notes from Yugoslavia and Serbia, photos from the time of the war(s),a German soldier’s helmet, pages of newspapers – anything and everything from the Bad Days That Are Over but Still With Us in Many Ways. These objects are taken from two cardboard boxes on the side of the stage and are used freely, just as the single table and chair set in the left center: the game knows no limits, wounded freedom-fighters turn into careless children or lovers imitating mechanic sex by the rhythm of nostalgic folk-pop as the lyrics appear as subtitles on the back screen.

Movement, images words and sounds are inseparable, everything serves the function of drawing the portrait of these two people and their time – which is our time, we are left with no illusions about that. Mitrovic manages to convey her vision on stage (she is ‘there’ in every sense), while Stechmann plays the quiet counterpart (perhaps too quiet, in comparison). The piece duly ends with the two performers chanting, crying and screaming football anthems (one in Serbian, the other is German), ending in a dissonant note of sarcasm.

Serbia-Germany 2:2, we hear from a radio commentator. And isn’t he right?

Oct 21

Sanja Mitrovic

Maxime Fleuriot

Sanja Mitrovic – Will you ever be happy again ?

Well done, talented, clever, well performed, vivid, suprising, complex. Here are the qualities one can find in the play in Will you ever be happy again ? by the young director Sanja Mitrovic. What is this about ? Born in Serbia and living in Netherlands, Sanja Mitrovic questions her identity. How do you deal with your national identity in a country like Serbia ? What do you make of the past ? How to accept and live with what has been done by your family, neighbours, friends ? In thinking over these questions, Sanja Mitrovic draws a comparison with german people after WW2. And so she puts two people on stage, herself as a serbian and a young guy – Jochen Stechmann – as the german guy. These two refered to their own family history and memories to build the play. For instance, at some point in the play, Jochen Stechmann shows an official document from the nazi period, a family record established by the authorities to prove he has no jews ancestors. He also shows a picture of his grand mother dressed up and smiling before attending a Hithler’s speech. As for Sanja, she evokes in a playful way the overwhelming reference to Tito in the raising of serbian children and teens. And so on. All these elements are vividly incorporated in a playful, inventive, dynamic way, almost joking. Sure that Sanja Mitrovic knows ho to tell stories. The dramaturgy of the play is also quite efficient, weel built, vivid, dynamic. The director also makes references to the present period, the realm of money and sex. The plays ends on a desperate and comical sequence : the two partners singing soccer fan songs, showing their pride in their country. Relating to what we saw before in the play, this outrageous pride sounds silly but also terrifying.

Oct 20

When I was a very rich man (on “Life and Strive”)

Dean Damjanovski

The artistic project “Life and Strive” by the two young Berlin-based artists Anat Eisenberg and Mirko Winkel takes us on a journey into the world of the richest representatives of the global society. Our group consisting of 8 people (max allowed is15) was taken on an arranged meeting for buying apartments in the tallest building in Istanbul located in one of the most luxurious and fast growing parts of the city. Each member of the audience was advised to take on an identity of a potential buyer with an imagined, but still close to reality, biography. After the arrival we’ve been welcomed by a well-dressed salesman who didn’t spare time and energy to explain us in details all the specific characteristics of the building. And there was much to tell – from the state of the art eco-system that preserves 20 per cent of the energy to a golf course on the 38th floor and garden in the apartment. The price was such that probably none of us could ever be able to afford – from 1.7 to 7.8 million US dollars depending on the size, east-west exposure or which floor the apartment is on. This whole almost surreal experience lasted a little over an hour until one of the authors, still in the role of a “freelance agent”, called us to leave because our bus was waiting. Of course, no one made any deal about buying an apartment.

This work raises so many questions on the line of what is “performative”, where is the performance and who is it aimed at that one may think that we are dealing with an ingenious work here. Unfortunately, that is not the case. It is only one of many attempts to transfer performance from specialized places into the public sphere and into everyday life. Nevertheless, the future participants of the “Life and Strive” project will have a memorable experience that will last for a long time.

 

 

By Dean Damjanovski

Oct 20

Observing a house is not art

Theresa Steininger

Always wanted to feel like the rich? Always wanted to see an unbelievably luxurious flat? Anat Eisenberg and Mirko Winkel are going to take you: In their performance „Life and Strive“, which they do until 23rd of October every day at 2pm, you kind of become a wealthy person observing one of the most expensive houses in Istanbul, maybe Europe. They make you pretend that you are interested in buying a 7.8-million-dollar-flat, talking with the sales manager and inspecting the flat. In order not to make sales managers too suspicious, they go to different luxury-towers being built in Istanbul at the moment.

Obviously Eisenberg and Winkel want to show that we are all performers, from the sales manager onwards to ourselves. This piece at one hand shows acting in every day life. But on the other hand it is betrayal in various senses: We come to the meeting point willing to observe, not to be active, what then we have to be. Even more, we all betray the sales manager, part of the game is that during the whole excursion, everybody is often thinking about how he will react and if he will notice. In our case he was very cooperative and if he was suspicious, he did not show. He was friendly until the very end, answered all questions, tried to present the flats in all details. Poor guy, one has to think, making so much effort and maybe assuming that these not very rich looking persons will most likely never come back to him to buy….and still he has to stay in his „performance“.

Still for me the difficult thing about this performance was that is was none. Although it was very interesting to see this building from inside, to enter to this science-fiction- world, which all this seemed to me, to think about questions one could ask in order to come up to the part one has to play, and although it was quite enjoyable to see the view from the highest building of Istanbul, for my maybe too limited definition of art, this wasn´t. But thanks for taking us anyway.

Theresa Steininger

Oct 20

Crying out the mutual desparation

Theresa Steininger

Singing, shouting and crying out the mutual desparation of all women, the performer in Nicole Beutler´s „1: Songs“ becomes the personification of famous suffering examples of her sex. In her piece, which Beutler created together with Sanja Mitrovic and Gary Shepherd, Mitrovic is on an almost empty stage, only having five microphones she switches in between. She sings different songs, many of them in some kind psychedelic. The creators have chosen rock music to bring to stage different stories of suffering, like Gretchen´s (of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe´s „Faust“) Marie´s (of Georg Büchner´s „Woyzeck“) or the antique Antigone. Mitrovic cites from Faust, bringing the famous words of Gretchen´s last monologue into a quiet, but agressive rock song. After showing a – in relation to the others – rather simple situation „Please god, let him call me“ with her head in her neck, agression takes over the whole evening, she cries out her wishes, her despariation – „I want everything of life“, but then „If not, I want to die“. This strong situation is cut by a s short „Okay“, she comes to the next scene. Mitrovic barks, pretends to undress, but doesn´t, tells the audience „Watch me vanish“ and in a strong situation moves as if being shot by a machine-gun. She jumps around without any obvious reason, suddenly throws all microphones to the floor, says sorry and comes to a very quiet Shoop-shouwada-song.

 

Beutler´s/Mitrovic´s performance brings a lot of impressions to stage, some of them very strong, still the red line through the evening was too weak, the topics she had chosen had been presented too often before. Giving the desparation of women a voice, bringing discontend with the world around us to the stage, with the final claim „More than machinery, we need humanity, more than cleverness, we need kindness, we all think too much and feel too little“, which seems important, but also naive after all that came before, the impression remains that of a partly strong performance, but not one that affects – because it is then just one of many.

Oct 20

Life and Strive by Anat Eisenberg & Mirko Winkel

Martina Rösler

The two young artists Anat Eisenberg & Mirko Winkel based in Berlin met each other in the MA-programme „Solo/Dance/Authorship“ at the Inter-University Center for Dance (Berlin). In their new work, created especially for the city of Istanbul, they do a research on the current trends in upper class residential buildings, which are based on the creation of self-contained, separate communities.
A limited number of spectators/participants (maximal 15 people) is meeting on the rooftop of luxury Marmara Hotel, offering a stunning view over Istanbul. The artists introduce their work very briefly and inform us that we are going to have an appointment in such a building pretending we are willing to buy or invest. We are encouraged to create a fake identity in terms of believability.
The duration of the transfer in a minibus stimulates various thoughts about identity, the further development and also doubts about the veritableness of the whole event. Will we ever arrive? We do! The two artists split the group and stay as “assistants” with them. Two different buildings are examined. A “real” sales conversation takes its course, finding ourselves in the 26th floor of the construction site of Rixos Residences with a breathtaking view, talking about prices and furniture. The absurdity of the whole situation, which started playful is getting unpleasant and objectionable. One of the interlocutors is not clearly aware of the fact that the entire dialog is not real, not honest. This unequal degree of knowledgeability makes the project non-transparent and somehow missing the point.
The journey ends again at the starting point, but the “audience” is left alone with a lot of questions. What remains is simultaneously an abiding memory and unique experience as well as an indisposition and discomfort about the whole topic of differentiation, exclusion, affiliation and membership.

Oct 20

Nicole Beutler, 1: Songs

Lise Smith

Several recent dance theatre productions have concerned themselves with the physicality of performance in other modes of presentation, particularly live music. One thinks of the surreal puppetry and “sonic haemoglobin” of Pierre Rigal’s Micro, or Gilmore Productions’ touring narrative The Blank Album. As with both of these productions, German choreographer Nicole Beutler’s1: Songs is at one and the same time a performance and a representation of a performance, playing with both the language and the physical codes used by musicians during a live gig.

The piece’s sole performer, Sanja Mitrovic, begins in backlit obscurity, voice echoing into one of the five microphones bristling on the forestage. Mitrovic is severely dressed, in a buttoned-up dark grey shirtdress. Her voice is charmingly fragile, wobbling slightly as she sings the words of legendary female figures ancient and modern: “My bosom aches for him”, “My friends, I can no more”. Comfortable perhaps behind the words of other women, at times the performer seems to accidentally reveal too much of herself; she chants “Please god make him call me back!” long after one track has ended, until she catches herself in the act and coolly calls for the next song.

Gary Shepherd’s music score is in itself entertaining, flitting between indie rock and something that sounds like the bastard progeny of Josh Wink and Joey Beltram – to which Mitrovic pulses through her torso, arms at 3’o’clock, amping to the bass. As the performance progresses, her glacial ice-maiden demeanour and severe dress both gradually unravel; until Mitrovic is skipping around the stage in combat boots, dress unbuttoned and hair flying, screaming the words of Antigone and Medea.

1: Songs is a brave and powerful presentation, and Mitrovic is never less than completely in the moment of performance. A gripping and persuasive look at the female voice through history, through the lens of contemporary concert culture.

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