Stillferdiger og mørk poesi er ikke for fjortiser i flokk De ble tydelig under forestellingen “Survival”i gär.”

Recensie over Survival in het Agdertheater in Kristiansand ( Noorwegen) waar de organisatie zonder overleg ineens een stuk of 90  onvoorbereide  14 en 15 jarigen in de zaal liet…
Zie ook de afbeelding hieronder.

Vertaling:

SLOW POETRY WASN´T REALLY ANYTHING  FOR THE TEENAGERS OF FOURTEEN

Quiet and dark poetry isn`t the hottest for a bunch of young teenagers. This became obvious during the performance «Survival» yesterday.

The puppeteers, Gérard Schiphorst and Marije van der Sande, invited in their stride after the per­formance the adults among the audience for a discussion about the show and its targeted audience. Bravely done. That means the actors had experienced a restless audience themselves during the per­formance. School classes, fourth and seventh grade made the majority of the audience. The younger ones surely enjoyed this somewhat weird object theatre performance, while the older ones soon lost their attention. Eventually many had to go and pee.

TAMTAM has long experience with so-called object theatre. To illustrate what this is: In this perfor­mance there were a couple of hammers, a pair of scissors, a muffler or similar, two mason`s spoons, bicycle lights and a jigsaw amongst the object that were given life. In addition, there were «persons» – that is to say a little puppet that most of all looked like an ant-eater, but nevertheless this was the main character K. And then another one, who looked like and behaved like a dog. In the size of a hand. And K became a moon, the jigsaw a bird – in short objects and puppets changed function. It all took place on a table – a landscape – desolate and dry, with a ramshackle house on one side. Here K lives his miserable life. All sorts of calamity befall him. Storms and rain destroy, a fire starts in the house, he`s being robbed, and constantly craft tools that cannot be interpreted as anything else but public authorities and other persons of power, intervene in his life and make it unbearable.

The piece is in a way launched as a mood report in the spirit of Kafka and also a bit after The Law of Murphy, the one that says that if anything can go wrong, it will. The two puppeteers are not wearing masks, they don`t speak but make sounds. They do not even attempt to hide their hands. Because of this, the movements of the puppets can now and then be experienced as a bit clumsy. Try to take your own scissors and make it walk across the table. You may help it as much as you want to, and you`ll see what I mean.

Survival is a poetic and at the same time dark story about difficult living conditions. Adults will have the patience to watch it, kids may experience both the beauty and the excitement in the simple and tiny movements. But teenagers of fourteen surely must be offered something else and more tangible.