How communicate without the language?
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| © Nada Zgank |
After a show without words, the
second day of the Luaga und Losna Festival programms an incredible performance
from the Werk 89 and Zavod Federacija Ljubljana, imagined by the Slovenian
director Peter Kus where the language isn’t so easy to apprehend. In Bumm, Krach, Peng! everything is
possible, the imagination seems to have no limit…
“There
is theatre behind every musical performance and I want to make this out”
Peter Kus
A language to find
The performance is in German and as
a non speaker, it should have been difficult for me to understand well the
performance but because it’s a show where the communication between the
characters mostly passes through the music, it’s quite understandable thanks to
a scenography well orchestrated. As the parents in the play who doesn’t
understand their child unable to speak, we enter in an abstract world in which
everything can happen, where all the objects can become an instrument! The
child can’t speak the same language as his parents but he has to communicate
with his family, so he uses all the objects he can find to establish a contact
and that’s how the “carronette” (a clarinette in a carrot) borns, the kitchen
paper roll tube is combined with two CDs to give birth to a flute, etc. Peter Krus
shows a great imagination to find the way to give a sound to improbable quotidian
objects. All the instruments used in the show are designed by the director who
reused some instruments from previous shows and who needed half a year to create
the new one, if some instrument can make us think at some instrument which
still exist, there is no usual instruments. The show always surprises us, it
starts with two percussion tables in the middle of the stage to become a lot of
places like a school room, a kitchen, an ornithologist office, a medical room
of operation, etc. The tables in the center is the meeting point for the three
artists, Urška Cvteko, Michael Pöllman and Krištof Hrastnik, before they split to take their
role and enter in each environment which describes a child life where the boy
has to find his own way to communicate. This space is the place where they can
make the transition between each scene and start being someone else, start to
give life to a whole new universe, they always join the center to better split
them after like an explosion, like a big bang, the percussions tables gives the
rhythm to the performance and are the start of everything, as if the music would
be the beginning of everything…
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| © Nada Zgank |
A show about life and giving life
The music is really the main part of
this show, it’s what gives a sense to what we see, it’s what makes the link
between the characters. When they first arrive on stage, they play percussions
on the two tables to evaluate themselves and see who will be the one able to
reach the drumstick and be the cocky leader. They’re like children fighting to
be the better, fighting to be acknowledged, fighting to live, fighting to
impose their way of speaking or their vision of the word. The character has the
same name as the artist who sometimes act like the director by deciding what
they’re going to show us about the life of this child with his own language,
they quickly act like parents who wants to control their child’s life but
little by little, we understand that they have to adapt to his creativity, to
his way of speaking. They have to try to understand how communicate with their him.
They become the child who has to learn a new way of speaking…
The music and the sound effects are
very effective to gives us the meaning of what happens on stage, we understand
everything, even the plastic puppetry shows without word about the life’s
evolution. The comedians seem to enjoy acting their role and giving birth to
new and unusual instruments, they’re like children and they succeed to take us
with them, to bring us in this universe where we have to apprehend the codes,
but the learning is very easy…
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| © Nada Zgank |
The strength of this show is to make
us travel into a whole new musical environment, we recognise all the sound, but
they’re taking life in an unusual way, in a different way, through this weird
instruments, we understand that the difference isn’t a problem, on the contrary
it can be a way to evolve. This performance is an hymn to the tolerance and the
difference! This performance is a real experience: first as spectator because
we discover new instruments and artists with an incredible charisma on stage to give
a strong colour to those characters, then like a child because at the end of
the show the artists explain us in a pedagogic way how they create some
instruments and let us try them… All the way long, they interact with us,
making us part of the show to reach the apotheosis where we become this family
by using those new ways of communication. Adults and children penetrate with
curiosity and desire to this unspoken universe…
This performance is incredible, it
talks about life and how we have to adapt to all situations, all differences.
This play is as entertaining as it’s serious and can bring new perspectives to
all the families, the parents can find a way to interact more with their
children when they don’t want to talk so much, the children can find a way to
develop their creativity, the whole thing concluded by the discovering of new
instruments, so don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about life in
community and learn how to build your own musical object or how to play with.
Jérémy Engler from L'Envolée Culturelle
