Images from performances of "Red Dragon" by Suka Off and "El Niño" by Teatr À Part
Polish theater troupes Teatr À Part and Suka Off are set to give stirring performances at the 2010 Aurillac Street Theatre Festival
Between 18-21 August, Teatr À Part will perform El Niño, an original show by the theatre's founder and art director, Marcin Herich. Written in 2003-2004 at Teatr Cogitatur in Katowice, Teatr À Part has staged the show since 2004, when the artist ended his tenure at his former theater. The performance is the second part of the outdoor Trilogy of Human Existence by Marcin Herich and Teatr À Part (the other two being Femina and Faust).
El Nińo is a story about tough love in a time of anxiety. Set in a post-industrial world plunged into the shadow of 20th century disasters, a contemporary world of plagues and cataclysms, suffering from AIDS, SARS and the tragedy of September 11th. The show is also a tragic parable about unsuccessful maternity. Large mobile sets, stilts, smoke, water, and fire provide the background for this highly emotional performance.
The universal, ordinary story about a couple's life is thrown into El Nińo's violent contemporary, actual context. El Nińo is also a kind of transcription of the classical tragedy into contemporary radical visual alternative theatre, filled with visceral symbols and metaphors. El Nińo's style and aesthetics refer to the Roman pantomime pyrriche: perverted, bloody, cruel, full of wild sexuality, and truly realistic, it was created using the emotional composition method.
El Nińo has been performed in Poland, Brazil, Germany, Italy, and Serbia.
Suka Off, also from Katowice, will perform White Room (18 August) and Red Dragon (19 August). White Room is the troupe's largest performance, an apocalyptic vision of a place where the body is reduced to the role of a gatherer. It is a place where emotion is useless and incinerated. The pain used as treatment recalls a physicality and the irreversible course of events. It is also a story about rejection and superficial social acceptance of those who are 'touched'. The viewer becomes a voyeur representative of society. The plot brings together elements of body art, video installations, and live generated music.
Suka Off's Dragon series creates a fictional synthetic form - one that does not occur in nature and is part of a mythology propagated by the troupe: though the molting process is similar to one found in nature, in this case, it is the skin that sheds the burden of the body. The plot presents the process and effort over the structure of the elastic surface.
The annual Aurillac Street Theater Festival (Festival de Théâtre de rue d'Aurillac) has brought together amateur and professional theater troupes from around the world for 25 years. In 2010, the Festival will be held on 18-21 August.
- À Part Theater Association, El Niño, written and directed by: Marcin Herich, performances by: Monika Wachowicz, Natalia Kruszyna Joanna Pyrcz, Jakub Kabus, Maciej Dziaczko, Lesław Witosz, Dariusz Piotrowski, Marek Radwan; set design: Marcin Herich (El Niño costume design and tailored by Jolanta Wozimko), music: fragments of compositions by Digitonal, In Slaughter Native, Kronos Quartet, Soma, G. Allegri, P. Glass, A. Piazzolla; show dates: 18-21 August 2010.
- Suka Off, White room, performances by: Sylvia Lajbig, Piotr Węgrzyński, music and visual effects: Piotr Węgrzyński; show date: 18 August 2010. Red Dragon, performances by: Sylvia Lajbig, Piotr Węgrzyński, music: Piotr Węgrzyński; show date: 19 August 2010.
More information about the Aurillac Festival available at:
www.aurillac.net.
Source:
www.apart.art.pl,
www.sukaoff.com.