out, via negativa

IGOR RUŽIĆ, 17. November 2008, Radio 101 Zagreb

The Slovenian performance group Via Negativa has already demonstrated the value they attach to an interactive approach. All of their projects to date, all part of a seven-year-long scheme of enacting deadly sins, were interactive, as performance art indeed is. At times, perhaps, even slightly more so, or at least with an insistence towards it. Well, a simple summons to cooperate delivered from the stage only very rarely falls on fertile ground in a more or less darkened theatre. The stage continues to be a position of power, or at least more power than that of the silent auditorium, and the members of the group know this even as they attempt to evade the normative ways of functioning in a performing situation.

”Out”, the last and concluding of the group’s performance pieces, this being the easiest way to describe the format of Via Negativa’s productions, takes up pride for its theme. The last of the deadly sins is once again the initial motif around which the performers and authors build their own miniatures, more or less fitting in with the overall group effort that can, at times, remind one of workshop presentations. Since in principle the focus is not on the actors, their every performance is read differently, assuredly as a meta-theatrical experience, something the performers are not attempting to hide and the audience, in any case, anticipate. Therefore, and for reasons also other than above, “Out” is the production in which Via Negativa has the most to say about the theatre itself, albeit no more than has also been said in “Viva Verdi”, still Via Negativa’s best piece to date. While the theme then was sloth, more precisely work, as well as the issue of artistic production, the focus now is the theme’s presentation, the ways in which to manipulate one’s own position of power and those who have acquiesced to it in a performance situation, be it consciously, subconsciously, or simply by abiding the rules of civilized behaviour and ritual goings to the theatre as an a priori cultural prerogative. (…)

What Via Negativa is trying to show, boldly and impertinently, since it dares to, is that the theatrical space is in equal measure filled by the performers as by the audience, the former with their audacity and skill, the latter with their understanding and consent. A shortcoming in any of these components annuls the theatre, despite the imaginative stage direction, décor, mists, sound and fury. Every one of the witty, hysterical, abject, nonsensical and gentle episodes in this performance is therefore a living defence of the theatre, all up to the point in which one of the particularly agile women performers opens the side door and reminds the audience that, literally, they should not have to take “being fucked around”. This summons to leave the theatre, which on the other hand is not eviction, comes after at least an hour’s long testing of the audience and their readiness to undertake with humility the watching of what is largely nonsense, even if at times witty nonsense. On the other hand, it is true that each of the episodes does repeat some of theatre conventions to which we normally consent, from false provocation, to pure exhibitionism, awkward improvisation and plain balderdash, or even mindless wasting of performance time without recourse to any concept. Though not in the least bit agreeable, “Out” is a performance piece that should, for all of the above, be made a part of an education programme, say in the seventh or eighth grade of primary school. An audience educated in this way would ensure a better theatre, because it would neither abandon it haughtily nor assume it was – a theatre critic.