“You can love death because that is natural. Death can be funny, but
marriage is sad. Just like everything in our lives,” said Paskal,
Jan-Pier and Zhyuzil- the attractive and mincing actors of the French
“Kokuet” street theatre. Their funeral drama took place on Abovyan
street for two days. Nobody goes to a street theatre neatly dressed and
clean-cut. The street theatre itself invades our lives and forces us to
participate in all the action. In this case, it forces us to accompany
the funeral procession. The theatre, which looks out at the street and
attracts the attention of passer-bys on the street, takes us back to
the times when there was no actor-spectator separation and the
spectator was the main character of the play. The French actors did the
best they could to mix the smooth rhythm of life in Yerevan and make
the funeral procession not all too serious. There were many people at
the play entitled “Mother’s Funeral”. Everyone was interested in what
would happen next as they searched for the road leading towards the
cemetery. The slogan of the French actors “Our goal is provocation, to
cause shock and show that there are no bans” justified itself.
The jokes made on and about the coffin and the actors getting naked
from time to time were not considered a blasphemy-at least not for the
Armenians. “Why are they happy if they are burying someone?” “Look,
they are running with the coffin”, “They are crazy. They are throwing
the coffin in the trashcan”, “Did you see how they put a heart on the
coffin?”, “Oh my god, he is going into the water naked”. These were
some of the remarks made by the people who had gotten into the act. The
play continued on its own and progressed. It made its way to the street
stopping traffic, then the store where a French woman with wet and
holed socks was spraying some perfume, then the park, where preserved
flowers were falling apart in the flower garden, a swimming pool, where
the relatives of the deceased mother dipped their uncle in the pool and
left him in the middle of the fountain, and even the holes on North
Street so they could find a good place to bury the mother’s carcass.
The angry constructors were trying to stop the wet and dirty
foreigners. They said to them. “This is a closed area. If something
happens, who is going to be responsible?” Many responded to that
question: “Can’t you see that we are burying a dead body. Show some
respect and let us pass.” The crowd of people with dirty clothes and
shoes made its way to the republic square where the actors put the
coffin on top of somebody’s car (the driver helped the actors out and
even refused the 1000 drams that they offered him). In honor of the
deceased, they all went in a circle and went into the hotel accompanied
by applause. The play was over. But there still remained some mystery
to it all: death awaits us every step we take and we must be ready for
it. It is true when they say that theatre is a small model of life that
shows the situation of society’s nervous system. By working on the
streets, the actors understand how we live our lives. Are we happy with
our lives, or sad? Are we at ease, or worried? The French actors were
content with us. “The response from residents of Yerevan was very
natural. We are also Christians and we must not pay that much attention
to the taboos. Obviously we will not do our play in Muslim countries.
You must understand one thing: the Communist mentality is in the past.
Nowadays, everything is allowed”. Theatre, in particular street
theatre, must have unexpected scenes. The scene that caused a lot of
chaos among people was when the actors unexpectedly pulled down their
pants. “What’s wrong with getting naked?” said Paskal who gets naked
very often. “It is hard to imagine anything more natural than getting
naked. We all get naked when we sleep or have sex. Nakedness, love,
death and food are the bases of life.”
Unison of egos
During the opening of the “HyeFest” film festival, Janni Groensvold
from Sweden presented her solo dance entitled “Alter ego”. The dance
was a breathtaking performance reflecting the memories of the dancer
and reality. The dance was like a storm taking place in the dancer’s
soul and it developed even more with the shades portrayed on the
projector screen. The Alter ego (the second ego) was continuously in
the dancer’s mind. It was forcing her to remember again and again and
re-interpret the past. It is clear: the woman is alone, unsatisfied,
and she looks inside her childhood to find all the solutions to her
problems.
According to the author of the performance and one of the directors of
the Gyoteburg theatre Eva Ingemarson, the performance was a try in
mixing different types of art. There is no doubt that the play was
impressive. The emotional dance was good also. Creating the illusion of
cutting the string of life and then intertwining it back together, the
reminiscences in Swedish, and the unison of both egos (the white outfit
of the dancer/actor appeared on the projector screen-symbolizing the
unison of egos). The first and second egos can be united if you know
how to dance. This was kind of a psychological diagnosis-a little
unclear but at the same time very beautiful.
Post-Soviet illusion
“It was our childhood and childhood is beautiful,” said Veronica
Nosalskaya who is an actress from the Kazakhstan “Art@shock” theatre
with interesting facial features and behavior. In the play “Back in the
USSR”, Veronica and her two fellow actresses portrayed the life of two
girls living in the Soviet Union and their dreams and expectations. We
have already begun to forget how life was back then, with all the bans,
deficits, and a time when the ideal life never became a reality. To
live in a country where there is no sex and candy. In a time when the
lady’s knight in shining armor was portrayed in the shape of Lenin (if
not Lenin, at least Gagarin or Budyon). Having the “Tsokso vo rpchprp”
chocolate candy and the “vpPpsFSO” stockings were far away dreams. One
way to define the return of the USSR was fantasy with motives of being
reality. There was no longing for the return, but rather a self-irony,
an apologizing smile. The actresses are filled with femininity and each
one has her own mask put on. They are enthusiastic, beautiful and
unsuccessful. They grow and as they grow, they remember how they used
to stand in line at school, the red necklace that they used to wear and
the first gossips about their first kiss.”
“We don’t know whether it was good or not. We don’t make conclusions,”
said the Russian actresses from Kazakhstan and the authors of their own
speeches. “During the play, we act out our role just how we remember
and feel it. We think that our generation should be happy that it has
gotten the chance to live both in the USSR and the post-Soviet era.”
But we think that the next generation will be even happier due to the
fact that it has not seen the life filled with strange and
incomprehensible pseudo ideals. Just like the cheerful French actors
who did not understand what we, the people living in the post-Soviet
era were laughing at.
Stop-Time Out
The two German actors Bernard and Jacob are from the “Antagon” theatre
in the city of Franklinmein. The “Antagon” theatre has produced an
open-air drama entitled “Time Out” (October 7, Republic Square). The
drama will include music, dances, special effects and fireworks. The
“Antagon” theatre has been around for 15 years already and plays a big
part in the series of European street theatres. “Time Out” is about the
expiration of time and being left behind in time. Bernard Bub says:
“With this drama, we wish to describe time as a kind of small machine
which shows our, your and everyone’s lifetime. For some people, time
goes by slowly, yet for others, it is fast. We are saying ‘stop and
think: are you leading the right life? Look at what is going on in the
world. Think about where you are going’. It is very important for the
“Antagon” theatre to present the drama in the Eastern countries because
the German actors want to “break the barrier between the East and West
so that the Eastern culture does not stay behind.”