PUF – The Contemporary International Theater Festival
I would like to write more about theatre and interesting theatre events in the last decades just before quarantine days in the year of 2020. Now as we are all locked up, the concept of site-specific theatre outside of traditional theatres and closed space sounds is even more appealing. Imagine theatre on the surface of an ancient old Roman stones and buildings? If we take into account the quarantine that we are all in, it may bring romantic interest for the theatre in general, and it also may bring a sublime existential fear from the closed space. The theatre event I am talking about is indeed happening in Europe, Istria, Pula in Croatia and it is a site-specific theatre event, outside as well as inside, in the open air, on the squares of ancient Roman buildings, its undergrounds, old army barracks, boats not just theatre building: The event is called PUF – The Contemporary International Theatre Festival. Here theatre is site-responsive, as a term and as a practice, referring to the alternative-venue trends. It specifically refers to the idea of artists responding to the space in which they’re choosing to create.
This small budget theatre festival has the potential of a big Edinburgh Fringe Festival because the town of Pula has a serious site-specific theatre potential as Edinburgh. It explores the way that a site’s many incarnations and histories continue to build and sit on top of each other, in a sometimes not very peaceable co-existence in history. Digging in the local history archives revealed astonishing pictures of different-style arches, which seems elaborate architecture for an amusement arcade of different types of the theatre until further investigation revealed the original life of the buildings that are having a brilliant capacity to stage a socially engaged, contemporary theatre piece. The ancient old Romans stepped into a history of this little town when Augustus transformed Pula into an imperial city and built the monumental exceptional examples of Roman architecture there. Today, this is a town perfect for all kinds of theatre, that blends into a tourist day to day living perfectly. I am talking about contemporary, site-specific theatre, with its gently rolling scenery, the pleasant climate on one side, and entirely different socially and politically deprived stories on the other side.
The formation of Pula, the Roman colony dates to the time of Caesar, and the task of the foundation were entrusted to Caesar’s father in law and Cassius Longinus, brother of another Cassius, who entered the history as Caesar’s assassin. The names of the founders are engraved in the oldest standing Roman monument in Pula, the Hercules Gate, which also shows the bearded head of this mythical hero whom the Romans, adopted from Greek mythology. The first mention “Polai” occurred in 3rd century b.c., in the work of Greek poets Callimachus and Lycophron in the mythological story of Jason and Medea. And yes, Jason stole the golden fleece, and with the help of Medea runs away. They didn’t dare to return without the golden fleece, so they settled in the upper Adriatic, where the Illiric tribe lived, and named the city – Polai. Today it is a common belief that ancient Golden Fleece was actually a source of drinking, groundwater coming out.
PUF – The Contemporary International Theater Festival
Contemporary Dance Within the Site-Specific Theatre
Without abusing the term site-specific to refer to dance and performance that takes place in a particular venue – that may be a non-traditional art/performance venue – chosen to reflect the content of the piece I reflect one of the theatres/participants at the festival PUF19. There are rumors from the Western world that the dances of Africa are a sheer display of thoughtless motions made by animists. The mixture of African tribal dance within the frame of the contemporary dance structure is very very complicated if it is embodied into the entire theatre play. The dances have transited to the modern stage as a result of displacements by African colonialism. The impact of colonialism, the dynamics of globalization, the challenges of technology have threatened the existence and survival of all intangible dance tribal heritages within native African cultural frameworks. Tribal dances of Africa, as indigenous cultural narratives are endangered enough and are fading into obscurity due to a Western paradoxical value and may exist now as an immigration syndrome of cultural displacement. Ebale Zam Martino with his production Eke? was part of the Belgian/Brussel born global piece project called The Peace Train. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009594014869 and traces the story of a man through the different stages of life. Ebale Zam Martinо’s energetic and fluid choreography invites us to the life journey initiation, where movements and emotions are omnipresent. Born and raised in Cameroon, he experimented with afro-contemporary dance, where he founded the dance company Nyanga dance with which he won several awards in Africa and Europe. Nyanga on African means playfulness, elegance, value creation and it is a word used in Cameroon. Ebale specializes in Afro-contemporary art and has his dance academy in order to value the African essence in modern dynamics of the contemporary dance. And what I saw in this production pointed me to the attitudes of the ancient African tribes with the relation to the present world. African tribal dance always caused debates as to whether the dances of Africa were purely and solely religious or and to what extent the dances were expressed as an art form in the world today. https://www.facebook.com/zamtvbrussel/?__tn__=kCH-R&eid=ARD0YArNUf0TP3pvbVsP2IXBnWhN8lafXScV7hXKrS2orZSSDVxBr-CnruneJGZcPqYOB7rdapL86Rt3&hc_ref=ARSjJ5UXNPCMM0Oah1K0CCWJ4GEqcRAUafK42krHdMop73ccW-w5_9bs94l1zOJk6N4&fref=nf&__xts__[0]=68.ARB2Zvaq9zkwEElKducoQFcGrMoQ7kCX_Rq-5B4-o8LskCivrvf7UtOycg2ua9KFXKBOb7z2Wayi4XFz20A76WYwB_zIDUhMiPDvjQol4s9Wf_K5lKApvrzg1ZzkCCvg4m1s29qx2mNJd8Y5X1isp_7eDdUFyo37uz0bzQw3WYUvDzaDP4pM0gFIy6kQIgo4nr6q-IFxjfBfzjgBTm3zyKiswkpZ1h3vTBJcilDUGs56XOHe7irHN5AzXXU1yU3IO9UmRuZrmP3kZviNwaj4vThymSuMSk6PWEnyzIGmYvAkkc-YQEVO2h4BPdSeKR6827lIj5Yl0lUrrKcKyMp-k-edGcLr5R0ibxXmfw.
PUF – The Contemporary International Theater Festival
Spiritual Body
But if perhaps space ‘came first’, the act of bringing the performance or exhibition to the venue and inviting an audience means that space, too, is being influenced, in turn, by the art, then all contemporary artists agree with me that one of the biggest joys of working with the site-specific type of art is the amount of creative freedom that allows, particularly joining disciplines together. I think that all contemporary artists agree with me that one of the biggest joys of working with site-specific type of art is the amount of creative freedom that allows, particularly joining disciplines together. In a typical theatre piece; acting, writing, music, dance, and movement have the role of an individual part in telling the story. This freedom not being able to fit in quite as neatly and gives a lot of room for experimentation site specifics that tends to differ from linear storytelling and creates art that doesn’t necessarily have to be explained.
One of the companies that made a special impression on me the year of 2019 in Pula was C.A.R.N. Experimento a group from Columbia that is a multidisciplinary research and a project that focuses on the body of the performer and its physical configuration as a matter of socio-political, cultural, subjective, and instinctive interests. The performance happened inside of the small theatre, placed in the old army building. The room itself created a claustrophobic feeling, yes, and it may have presented back then the nearby future of quarantine days in 2020 and the big worldwide changes due to coronavirus widespread. This production Dissection begins the questioning of life as a process of death. It is the journey within the flash and mind, a truce with the inner body, and an allegory of death. The mind speculates with the spirit or the soul by mobilizing the body within the theatre frame: something that makes us human and individuals. But what is more spiritual than the skin, what has more soulful then blood and bones? Dissection is an act of examining the contents of the body, organic and mental, via energetic body performance of a dancer Jennifer Caro, via the process of exposure and dispossession. Her body is a spiritual enclosure where idolizations of any kind are formed as a first and last reality. She questions the theatre environment that can be fantastic and miserable with respect to the body ”How miserable does the mind returning to the body since it lives by its own will and indifferent? ”
PUF – The Contemporary International Theatre Festival in Pula, Croatia the year 2019 celebrated 25th years of its wonderful existence, formed originally in Dubrovnik during the very beginning of the civil war in old Yugoslavia in the 90s. Due to security reasons, since the Dubrovnik was on the political border with Serbia and territorial conflicts, the festival moved to Pula in Istria (bordered with Italy). The founders were 3 different non – institutional theatres from 3 different towns in Croatia, Dubrovnik, Sisak and Pula but the festival now is and was directed by Branko Susac, the old theatre helmer from Pula. The accent from the beginning of the festival was always on no-government, site-specific, non-institutional, contemporary and experimental theatres, companies that are not financed by the government or, in this case, state politics.