Mamacallas

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Figures in a Landscape

Everyday Acrobatics after Francis Bacon

creation

18-20 april 2002 , Theatre Alfred ve dvoře, Prague, Czech Republic

creation and dance Alena Dittrichová, Michaela Komárková, Martin Frys, Ondřej Lipovský, Pierre Nadaud

stage design Ondřej Lipovský and Pierre Nadaud
music composed by David Vrbík

light design Vladimir Burian

conception Pierre Nadaud

co-produced by MOTUS o.s., Prague

supported by open Society Fund Prague

Technical

Presentation

Boxer’s dance and a circus theatre

Bacon’s disquieting figures draw attention to forces of the body, which have no longer anything in common with psychology and the art of forms.

The body overflows the skin borders in a special kind of inner irritation. Just like a dance from which figures and balances are elided. Dance of falls, decay, and discharges, dance of nerves and flesh.

A certain kind of animal hysteria turns over the individuality of faces. Just like a theatre where words would flow from the actors’ mouths and prevent them from gesticulation.
Theatre – circus, where the simplest displacements and positions become dangerous, where relationships between people are essentially physical.

P.N.

Recenze

TANECNI ZONA, Prague, Automne 2004, Pierre Nadaud

Theater of Endurance: the nature of Francis Bacon

Many aspects of the nature of Bacon's work fed the design of the stage set and choreography of "Figures...". One particular feature of his work, however, connects all the others : the endurance, persistence, and urgency of the figures he painted...

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Figures in a Landscape is is a vigorous and unusual physical theatre work. It uses an exciting cast of powerful young performers, all with very strong and varying characters and physical presences on the stage.

Unsentimental, it is nevertheless very human, clearly expressing weaknesses, obsessions, fears and cruelties. Each character is well developed psychologically and physically and all seem somehow extraordinary as they interfere with each other and co-exist in the distorted environment.The atmosphere is heated and intense, passionate and cruel. It expresses human emotional chaos and manipulation, the danger of overbearing desires and human powers out of control, while at the same time educating its audience to further tolerance and understanding of different, out of the ordinary people and behaviours. The characters are not stereotypical, they are surprising and well built and incorporate human aspects such as homosexuality and physical disability with a fresh and mature eye.

The unusual set is ambitious and well observed. Clearly related to the environments of Francis Bacon’s paintings it is creatively used by the performers. Surprising places and qualities of it are revealed during the show making a complex landscape where different events take place. It uses both form and colour to good effect so that bodies and parts of bodies are shown against striking visual backgrounds in sensitive response to the paintings.

Lizzy Le Quesne

Mamacallas

modified 01.25.2008

Photo Jiří Jirásek

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