Hashirigaki - ThÃ©Ã¢tre Vidy Lausanne

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Saison 2011-2012HashirigakiDe/ By/ Von Heiner GoebbelsThe Sydney Morning Herald (EN)10.01.2004HashirigakiConception, music and direction byHeiner GoebbelsParade Theatre, January 8What a thrilling way to light the fuse ofthe Sydney Festival: a piece that deifiessurprise, scoffs at expectation, andmerges most art-forms and emotions.Much art seeks to tie life down. HeinerGoebbels undoes the knots andwatches it take flight.In Hashirigaki - Japanese for flowingwriting, or rushing - the German composer/conceptualist/directorhas borrowedfrom such unlikely bedmates as GertrudeStein’s eccentric novel The Makingof Americans (1925), the Beach Boys’innovative 1966 album Pet Sounds andJapanese folk music. Add a dazzling andsurreal command of movement, sound,lighting, props and cyclorama projectionsand you have an entertainment likeno other.The main fuel is the spiralling repetitionsof Stein’s dense, often difficult-to-readtext. Ideas, for Stein, were fluid ratherthan contained, so that instead of tryingto narrate and depict, she used words toconjure the ephemeral nature of thoughtand being. While, on the page, this maystretch many readers’ patience, it wasamazingly invigorated by the witty andpoetic articulation of Charlotte Engelkes,a very tall Swede, Marie Goyette, amedium-sized French Canadian, andYumiko Tanaka, a very petite Japanese.The three women are variously actors,comediennes, mime artists, musiciansand singers.Stein’s words - like those of the BeachBoys - wear new clothes via the assortedaccents, and the varying sizes of theperformers is a source of visual incongruityand humour, just as it once was forJohn Cleese, Ronnie Barker and RonnieCorbett on television’s The Frost Report.The humour is the main surprise in a showthat created expectations of arty visualtreats - although wondrous examples ofthese exist, too. Above all, Stein’s wordsbecome great comic labyrinths thanksto the deft timing and sometimes deadpan,sometimes light-hearted delivery ofEngelkes and Goyette.The piece itself evolves like a Stein spiel,with repetitions, evolutions and unexpectedjumps. There are no monumentaltheatrical devices, just beautifully simpleideas and effects. A gong can becomethe wheel of a car; a bell can become ahot-air balloon; a Beach Boys pop songcan unravel into a desperately sad pieceof Japanese music (played by Tanaka),or the Japanese music can give way toEngelkes creating high comedy with thatearliest of electronic instruments, thetheremin, which generates pitch fromthe player’s movements between twoaerials.Goebbels may strive to generate theunexpected from the collision of his diversesources, but links are to be foundif you look for them.The closing I Just Wasn’t Made ForThese Times epitomises the strangemelancholy that haunts the show amidthe wackiness, wit and wonder.John Shand
Saison 2011-2012HashirigakiDe/ By/ Von Heiner GoebbelsRzeczpospolita (EN)09.10.2004Pure satisfaction«Hashirigaki» – despite of it’s title, beingan expression used in Japanese kabukitheater, meaning quick writing or rush– was a performance celebrated withdignity, slowed down in a magical way.The rush was left behind the theater’sdoor.The Swiss director Heiner Goebbelsshowed us the theatrical perfectionin beautiful, static scenes, completedwith music played by three performersand their singing. There was hardly anyplot in the performance. We could seeseveral études, composed in a very interestingway. In these études one couldsee and hear some pieces of GertrudeStein’s «The Making of Americans», theBeach Boys’ album «Pet Sounds» andJapanese folk music. They were mostlywhat we could call «tableaux vivants»(live paintings) – the spectator was charmedby the performers’ movements andgestures, by the images painted withcolorful lights.The three performers were being carefullychosen – the long-legged, red-hairedCharlotta Engelkes from Sweden, darkhairedMarie Goyette from Canada andYumiko Tanaki from Japan. As the differencesin height between the actressesreached up to twenty centimetres, theycreated a sort of a triangle while standingbesides each other. All three showed usamazing versatility: concerning choreography– in their synchronous movement;concerning music – in playing variousinstruments, including the orientalones; the vocal one – astonishing timbreand purity of their voices.Heiner Goebbels is not only a theater director,but also a composer. His perfor-His performance was being composedlike a symphony. The silent surrealisticscenes, cold and distanced, werecontrasted with the warmth of musicand lyric mood of short aphorisms beingsaid. All together worked with Swiss precision.It’s so good to see there are still people,who want to give others the pure artisticsatisfaction. Totally unpretentious, whichis so different from what we observein all the trendy theater productions,which are trying to shock the spectatorshowing him all the anomalies and dirtof everyday life, which are being hiddenunder the mask of saving the world. Thisis the delight of watching performanceslike «Hashirigaki» which lets us live withdignity by giving us hope.Janusz R. Kowalczyk
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