Inflate The Theatrical Event, Let It Burst!

ROK VEVAR, 17. November 2008, Večer Maribor

Bojan Jablanovec and his collaborators (Gregor Zorc, Katarina Stegnar, Sanela Milošević, Kristian Al Droubi, Petra Zanki, Boris Kadin, Nataša Živković, Darko Japelj, Uroš Kaurin, Rok Matek) have rounded off the Via Negativa cycle of performance pieces based on seven deadly sins with the production OUT (Stara elektrarna, production: Via Negativa, ITD, Zagreb, Glej Theatre), tying it to the theme of pride. How? Pride is inherent in the very structure of Out in a number of ways: as theatrical psychological stamina (actor demanding his own text), as a literal performing act (inflating a balloon), as provocation (Katarina Stegnar provoking the audience in various ways), as its own “wounded” consequence (Kristian Al Droubi), as manifestation of power, potency (Rok Matek), as cliché-ridden assistance (Nataša Živković) – and we could go on.

How do we get a handle on the production Out? Via Negativa conceives of pride in quite explicit terms, literally, analytically, almost scientifically, but less so moralistically. It seems to be saying the following: inflated nothing (the theatrical event) pushes out the membrane (the matter, through which the viewer morphs into the actor and the actor into the viewer) of its weak boundary to a point where it either bursts (viewers leave) or perseveres in a frail equilibrium (we are waiting to be let off by the theatre protocol). In doing so VN sticks to three main tasks: (1) it focuses on the substance (on the slippery nothing), which inflates (What stuff is the theatrical event made of?), (2) on the act of inflation itself (What is the theatrical event doing?) and (3) on the membrane of the object produced by the winds (Where is the limit to the theatrical event?). Of course VN poses a number of fundamental questions: (1) is theatre not merely a pure manifestation of haughtiness, a mixing of air (2) or is theatre not special types of wind, so to say “organs without a body” that cannot be structurally, dramaturgically or in any other way incorporated, and (3) is not theatre inherently subject to disorganization, coincidence, to something that is inevitably Out-side. Of course, one is prone to wonder: is Via Negativa series not turning itself into a convention of sorts, where inclusion is becoming more and more consistent and this outside evidenced as already a symbolic space, something already part of the idiom itself?

Certainly, there are conclusions to be drawn at the close of the Via Negative series. Between Starting Point: Anger (The Modern Gallery, 2002) and this year’s production Out (The Old Power Station) Bojan Jablanovec and his collaborators have created one of the most significant opuses of contemporary Slovenian theatre. In this opus the focus is not on the performance executed with a predetermined theme, a particular form and iconography, but rather as a format in which a semiotics with its structure get transposed and supplemented into a theatrical event the moment the viewers begin interacting with it. We could say that in the case of Via Negativa, it is the politics of each and every performance that is foregrounded, while culturo-political, aesthetic, performing, directorial, dramaturgical, theoretical and other contexts that powerfully contribute to artistic ideologies are being vitally questioned. Such politics gives rise to conditions in which the performers and viewers can begin writing their story from scratch, and make and remake themselves along the way rather than consent to fixed territories of moral positioning (deadly sin as an aesthetics of politics), as is the case within the police and politics of Western democracies. True, Via Negativa does not carry through its set tasks with equal success in each and every performance, but this is ultimately irrelevant: it has succeeded in opening up a field in contemporary Slovenian theatre for which theatre in Slovenia will never be quite the same again. Let us hope that VN explorations continue.