WAJDI MOUAWAD & CRYSTAL PITE
This week I have been separately inspired by the work of a couple of different artists, firstly the playwright Wajdi Mouawad, and also choreographer Crystal Pite. I have seen both their work before, but for some reason both have popped up again on my radar recently.
Curious coincidence- they’re both Canadian.
The Forests by Wajdi Mouawad
Dark Matters by Crystal Pite
On my final night in Lima I saw a production of Incendies (or Scorched in English) by Wajdi Mouawad. The production was performed in Spanish and for the first time in my two months in Peru I actually felt like I was keeping up with the language. I’m not sure how much of that can be attributed to my very average Spanish, but more perhaps I think to the deeply emotive dialogue and the languages at play that are beyond words.
In saying that I have just finished rereading it in English this time, and poetry of the text equally sublime and harrowing. I am absolutely dumfounded that it has yet to be presented at a major theatre house in the UK. I know has been performed in Sydney at Belvoir a couple of years ago. It is an outstanding play. (Also a brilliant film).
I have been reading more of his work and researching past productions.. The imagery woven into his stories is brilliant.
Below is a prologue from his play Alphonse. A one man show about a boy and his imagination…
When we’re little,
No one tells us very much.
So we imagine.
Later,
Imagining gets kind of complicated.
So we ask for information.
And so we become grownups and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s the natural order of things.
And things are well designed
Because they prevent us from going backwards
Which is a very good thing.
And things are well designed
Because they prevent us from going backwards
Which is a very good thing.
Because,
If by some impossible twist of fate,
A man crossed paths with the child he used to be, and they both recognised each other, they would both crumple to the ground, the man in despair, the child in terror.
His work reminds me of another favourite of mine, Amir Nizar Zuabi who wrote and directed The Beloved (The Bush/ World Stages London) in 2012. He has a new production in London playing this week at the Young Vic called My Sweet Land, which I am looking forward to seeing on Friday (trailer below).
Completely separately I was excited to see that Crystal Pite has been made an associate artist at Sadlers Wells this year. I saw her work Dark Matters, by her company Kidd Pivot at Sydney Festival a few years ago and remember falling in love.
I love her aesthetic and also adventurous spirit in her dramaturgical approach to story telling. The way she criss crosses through abstract and utterly visceral truth.
In her piece Dark Matters she used text from a Voltaire, that since stuck with me.
Man crawls and dies: all is but born to die:
The world's the empire of destructiveness.
This frail construction of quick nerves and bones
Cannot sustain the shock of elements;
This temporary blend of blood and dust
Was put together only to dissolve;
What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know.
Here is a brilliant interview/ insight into her work..
I love this quote "Dance is a duet between your instinct and imagination. When you dance you are profoundly engaged in being there." Crystal Pite
Her new show The Tempest Replica is coming to Sadlers Wells next month. Tickets booked!