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Stage animal / Theater enters the frame
By Michael Handelzalts

Theater found itself in a state of confusion in the second half of the 20th century. It was possible to continue presenting the rich dramatic literature that had accumulated over 2,000 years in different languages, but then the director had to shed new light on familiar classics, which sometimes meant abusing the text for the sake of vision and innovation (which could definitely be a stirring experience). Or the director could try to squeeze the maximum out of the immortal text, usually via the actors, their casting and the stage design (which could be wonderful, and which is perceived, unjustifiably, as conservative).

Out of a crisis over materials, the theater turned toward prose and film. As for films, especially when a show is based on a successful and well-known movie, in a certain sense they have the quality that the mythic sources of Greek drama had for their audiences when those plays debuted. (I am aware of the huge and significant differences).
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Here is the new telling, on the stage, of a familiar, almost iconic, story already told, seen, analyzed and accepted as a common cultural denominator. Isn't it the essence of theater to tell a familiar story and yet bring a new experience to the audience?

When we come across such productions on stage in Israel, we are usually talking mainly about lifting the plot and characters and placing them in the theater, in the flesh, portrayed by actors in our language. This was the case with "Rain Man" at Beit Lessin in Tel Aviv when Sasson Gabai played the role shaped by Dustin Hoffman in the movie, and Lior Ashkenazi took the part created by Tom Cruise.

That's one way of doing it, in which the theater recognizes its limits as a medium, and uses film as a reservoir of material. The artistic director of the Toneelgroep Amsterdam, one of the most admired theaters in Holland, Ivo van Hove, goes off in a different direction. He has mounted productions of John Cassavetes' "Opening Night," Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers," Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" and "Cries and Whispers," and now, at the Holland Festival in June, he presented his new work, the Antonioni Project, based on three films from the early 1960s by the Italian director: "L'avventura," "La notte" and "L'eclisse."

Van Hove's production is a rich and brilliant visual feast, which keeps the audience glued to its seats for two-and-a-half hours without an intermission, in Dutch (English subtitles were prepared, but due to human error, were not projected). Van Hove has at his disposal a brand new auditorium in the heart of Amsterdam, next to the municipal theater's older, traditional building. It was designed by the architectural firm of Jonkman-Klinkhamer and consists of a black box-like construction that seats 500 people on a steep balcony whose back rows edge close to the ceiling. The width of the stage is the same as that of the hall, about 17 meters, and its height is almost the same as the hall, nine meters.

For the Antonioni Project the entire stage (which is at floor level) served as what is known as a "blue screen" - a technique borrowed from movies which enables actors to be filmed in a studio with the addition of the background where they are supposedly located.

Van Hove, together with stage and lighting designer Jan Versweyveld and the (Israeli-born) American video designer Tal Yarden, created a breathtaking movie-theatrical environment. The stage looks like a giant, empty film studio, with bits of scenery strewn around (a double bed near a wall, a large white surface resembling a swimming pool). A track for the camera cart crosses the width of the stage, ending in a circle. Additional cameras are hung on cranes.

Somewhere on high hangs a huge movie screen. The audience watches the very small actors on the stage against a neutral blue background, and they see the camera that captures them, whose images are projected on the screen and edited to match the text. On the screen, the actors are seen against a city background, or in bed, or on an empty beach with clouds behind them.

This theater piece produces all the advantages of film (shots, editing, effects) while exposing the artificiality of that art. The audience sees both the result and its making, all the time. Sometimes they see something the camera captures behind the wall, while a different event is taking place on stage. Sometimes an actor is seen making his way on stage to the movie site, a long time before he enters the frame on screen. When the camera is seen moving on the stage, on the screen we move around the actors, and when the screen shows a photo, we see a long shot on stage that includes the camera and the technicians.

At a certain point the large screen vanishes, exposing the stage in its entire length and width, and 14 meters away, at the back of the stage, an opening in the wall is revealed, along with the jazz band that has been playing the movie score in real time during the whole performance. Later a screen descends, blocking the stage opening; when the face of an actor is projected on it, the actress on the front of the stage speaks to him, and it seems as if he is swallowing her up.

One of the actresses joined theater critics from different countries for a meal after a performance. She told us that preparations had taken two months, but during most of that time the director was occupied with the technical aspects of the project. The actors were asked to deal with their characters by themselves and fashion them on their own. A week before opening night, the show was shortened from four hours to two-and-a-half, with cuts in photos, scenes and conversations. The actors had to accustom themselves to movie acting (everything heightened and enlarged) without losing the theatrical nature of the production.

The troupe also puts on "ordinary" shows, such as, for example, Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Tempest," but van Hove, in particular at the end of the season, favors projects in which all the members of the troupe take part. Last year the season ended with a Roman project, a combination of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus," "Julius Caesar" and "Antony and Cleopatra." By the way, this phenomenon characterizes theater recently, to a certain degree, especially festival theater. There are no more shows, there are projects.

This amazing, abundant operation - brilliant theater any way you look at it - was performed only seven times. Perhaps it will return for roughly the same number of performances next season, perhaps it will travel abroad to festivals, if it can find a space big enough to accommodate its generous dimensions.
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