Belgrade



Even if there could only have been one winner of the Belgrade’s BITEF 2010, I would go wrong to do not mention best show of the year 2005 Isabella’s Room the Belgian Needcompany, directed by Jan Lauwers starring the great Viviane De Muynckof, blind Isabella. This explosive tragic musical comedy entirely overpowered audience’s heart and have received Politika Award of the Belgrade International Theatre Festival BITEF 2010. The play meant to be homage to blind Isabella, who has seen worst human horror of the world, on her own special way. The performance is very hard to forget and the real inspiration for this show was an actual death of Jan Lauwer’s father. Belgian Needcompany founded in 1986 and their work in the theatre has been by now, internationally recognized. According to Lauwers’ biography artists here get exceptional training, "training as an artist is decisive in his handling of the theatre medium and leads to a highly individual and in many ways pioneering theatrical idiom that examines the theatre and its meaning. One of the most important characteristics is a transparent, thinking acting and that paradox between acting and performing."

In addition, the story goes like this.

Isabella is old and blind and lives in her room situated in Paris and surrounded with many ancient Egyptian or African exotic objects and artifacts stolen or assigned by white colonists for centuries. The exotic artifacts belonged to Lauwers’s father. In the story, Isabella is blind and she is participating in the scientific experiment where images are projected into her mind by special camera. She will obviously distance herself from images and objects that she sees projected in her mind and the story will be told by alive actors of the production who will play a role of past away characters from Isabella’s past, through actor’s singing. “Look here the photo of the man with the beard. The man born out of the lie, my desert prince. He will always remain. Unlike Anna, Arthur, Alexander and Frank: gone. For good. He is the only one that still exists, my desert prince. When I switch off my camera I see him crystal clear, Felix. F.E.L.I.X. Moreover, that means, happiness in a dead language. Sham and illusion,” tells Isabella in the play. Lies of imagination here and lies of illusion are the answer for the lie of reality…and lies are currency of the world.



Isabella is the daughter of a desert prince who disappeared on an expedition and this is what her adopted parents, Arthur and Anna, told her. Both foster parents died in inability to live with lies and their house guest, desert prince or someone who wanted to be that, takes Isabella to Paris to a room full of petrified, fetished and mummified objects of one kind or another: anthropological artifacts and ethnological objects from a real actual desert. All that beautiful and exotic objects in Isabella’s room carry out a secret, a curious, funny or tragic tale about colonists and people who have had been enslaved for centuries, in order to provide artifacts and comfort of having an original art for white colonists from Europe. The objects in the show are separated from their cultural context by the view of a different era: a colonial and exotic for white Europeans. Objects taken from their cultural context appear deader than ever: a plain, museum pieces and dead comments on cultural appropriation. These objects in Isabella’s room has become a museum objects, fetishes, stored and framed in different perspective, to secrete and secure a horrified truth about colonization of black Africa and Egypt. In addition, Isabella has a life circle that covers entire 20th century, from I and II World War to a modern art, Picasso, moon trip, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust and pop iconography of the late 20th of century. Isabella’s Room actually inspired Bowie to play role of himself in the performance on one of many company’s tours: otherwise the role is masterly played by Belgian actor Hans Petter Dahl who is indeed, besides being a very good actor, a spitting image of younger Bowie. The play beside drama contains live music where performers actually sing. Performers here use narrative, dialogue, song, dance; they also use icons and artifacts, a diversity of character revelations, and eventually a great irony in their performance. According to Lauwers, Western countries have been alienated from group singing, and Jan here wanted to point out a ritual aspect of the play. Singing in this play is different form of energy exchange and it creates another type of communication with audience. Even, if the music in the play is indirect, it does indeed, dominate emotions and determine the direction of the play. “Isabella is like Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, a text that Lauwers directed with Viviane De Muynck” both these women fundamentally say yes,” explains Lauwers.


This is, most definitely one very contemporary play!

44th BITEF 2010 BITEF Festival Awards
The jury of 44th Bitef has decided, by majority of voices, to award Grand Prix “Mira Trailović” to the performance Uncle Vanya, directed by Jurgen Gosch, Deutsches theatre, Berlin.The special prize of 44th Bitef is awarded by a majority of voices to the performance Frankenstein-Project, directed by Kornél Mundruczó, for a skillful and brave balancing between dilettantism and professionalism.“ The jury of the Politika at the 44th BITEF has decided, by a majority of voices, to award the prize for the best directing to Jan Lauwers, for his performances “Isabella’s Room “and “The Deer House”. “Lauwers’s performances represent a unique dedication to story, imagination and theatric expression. In a detuned but clearly conceived and strictly controlled form, Lauwers manages to reveal the value of theatre language, its truth and purity, rare among the countless lies and illusions present in every aspect of contemporary society – media, market, politics, personal relationships. Although Lauwers’s performances speak of traumas and mistakes, they carry enchanting brightness and an unusual optimism which emerge from every level of the play, overwhelming them by its contagious tenderness and sincerity.“

BITEF FESTIVAL 2010
Terazije 29/1 Street
11000 Belgrade, Serbia
bitef@bitef.rs
www.bitef.rs


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