Faces Of Lust

BARBARA OREL, 27 December 2005, Dnevnik Ljubljana

A Scent Of (Licentious) Investigation (excerpt)

In a seven-year-long project Via Negativa – an exploration of seven deadly sins – Bojan Jablanovec has come to abandon theatre as an art of (re)presentation and creation of stage illusion. If his first three theatre events were still treading the deceptive boundary between fiction and reality on the interstices of classical theatre and performance arts, exploration of lust has ended up entirely in the realm of the real. In Would Would Not the director has put together a performative (non-theatrical) play addressing the audience as sexual beings, tempting them (initially with music, strawberries and wine – as though it were a party) to join the performers in experiencing their most licentious desires. Employing inventive (passive-aggressive) stratagems, the actors try to draw the audience into the play (which depends entirely on their participation), while principally endorsing one rule: should anyone reject participation, they will not be pressured but allowed to remain in the role of the spectator. The spectator’s role, however, is not voyeuristic, since one inevitably finds one’s self in a lit hall of Stara elektrarna, a converted power station, exposed at all time to the gaze of the performers as well as other spectators. The gaze game is introduced from the very start by Barbara Matijević, as she tries to seduce the audience by stripping and ends up sitting naked on a chair, stealing glances at them through a set of sunglasses.

Attention is directed at situations in which the individual can no longer control his libido and gratification becomes an intolerable urge. But what happens when an intimate desire is flaunted in public? That is the question. The performers (as well as their co-actor spectators) are not only up against the dilemma of whether to suppress or satisfy a desire, but being exposed to the others’ gaze is also a hindrance to their pursuit of gratification. It is possibly this that robs the lascivious images of much of their desirability. But the source of allure and the whole point of the performance lies elsewhere: in the tension between what is revealed and what is deliberately concealed (Branko Jordan texting various individuals, the text messages inaccessible to anyone else; Katarina Stegnar picking her spectator, ushering him out of the hall; Marko Mandić masturbating naked but viewed from the back; Sanela Milošević animating the penises of two volunteers, also viewed from the back). Tuesday’s performance (almost) had us witness an unprecedented body-art action on our stage to date: while a spectator was already holding a hammer over the penis of Kristian Al Droubi, who was assuring her everything was under control and she should go ahead and pin his organ down to a board, a woman raised her voice from the audience and stopped the action. The point is not in presenting what is shocking, but in exploring the dynamics of the relationships between all who are present. Lust then becomes merely a point of departure for a study of the process of perception, the game of voyeurism and the relation between the seen – presented event and the unseen – image, triggered in the viewer. Would Would Not does not conform to the expectations of the “classical” viewer so much as it imposes a responsibility on the viewer for the execution of this carefully structured open piece. At the same time it extends an exceptional opportunity for the spectator to personally experience some fundamental issues in performing arts.