WORLD CONGRESS: Beijing and Beyond

En avant: Global participants of the IATC-AICT World Congress in Beijing 

IT HAS BEEN a very busy 2014 for members of the International Committee. We continue to make additional opportunities for American Theatre Critics Association members to participate in international events. Beginning with the 2012 Warsaw World Congress, when ROBERT COHEN joined the delegation, seven different members of ATCA have represented the United States at IATC events.

BRAD HATHAWAY was invited to represent ATCA in India, for an established critics' seminar. Hathaway, long of the Washington, D.C., area and now a resident in the San Francisco Bay Area, made a case for critical advocacy regarding the interests of the larger theater community amid the ongoing struggle over intellectual property issues in the digital age. Hathaway reports:

The India Section of IATC convened a Critics' Symposium as part of the Sixth International Theatre Festival of Kerala in Thrissur, India from January 30 to February 1. Moderated by the section's founder, Deepa Punjani of Mumbai, the symposium examined what it means to be a critic in the 21st century. Presentations from Indian critics included Punjani's "The Transforming Force of Theatre Criticism in the Age of Digital and Satellite Technology," observations on three examples of theater arts as a tool for social change by Ajay Joshi of Pune, Vikram Phukan of Mumbai's "Getting Theatre the Coverage It Deserves: Beyond Press Releases and Hype" and two presentations by Kerala-based critics, Renu Ramnath and CS Venkiteswaran. Participants from around the world included Romania's Alice Georgescu, who spoke on "Critics in Transition: With Special Reference to the Work of Two Romanian Directors," Poland's Konrad Szczebiot who discussed "Polish Theatre of Form – Between Puppetry and Visual Art," and Sweden's Margareta Sörenson, recently elected IATC-AICT President at the Beijing World Congress, who discussed the stages of transition in the arts.

PATRICK DYER, a new member from Chicago, attended a Young Critics Seminar in Debrecen, Hungary, and WENDY ROSENFIELD attended the spring 2014 International Executive Committee in Caen, France, as the delegate for the committee chair. (While in France, Rosenfield saw JEAN LAMBERT-WILD's production of Waiting for Godot, which you may read about here.) Delegating is a practice that the current chair has employed regularly for the past two years: JAY HANDELMAN attended the spring 2013 International Executive Committee in Jönköping, Sweden, that May. Of his attendance at the Performing Arts Biennial (Biennalen Scenkonst), Handelman wrote for the Herald-Tribune in Sarasota:

Attending one of these festivals as an American accustomed to a certain style of performance is like walking into a different world, as I've discovered over the years at other festivals in Rotterdam and Warsaw.

Theaters around the world have their own way of creating performances that is nothing like what the vast majority of Americans think of as theater. [. . .] What is exciting for an outsider is seeing how collaborators try to break down the traditional walls that separate performers from audiences, and how stories or ideas are shared.

The most "traditional" piece I saw was From Sammy with Love, a two-man tribute to the life and career of Sammy Davis Jr., and to his eight-year marriage to Swedish beauty May Britt. In America, it might easily become a standard biographical look at the singer, but it becomes a pointed and entertaining story that deals with racism faced by Davis, Britt and the two talented Swedish song-and-dance stars — Karl Dyall and Rennie Mirro — who recall his dynamic style.

Hey, Babe: Karl Dyall, left, and Rennie Mirro, frame a photo of
Sammy Davis, Jr., in From Sammy with Love, at the Performing Arts
Biennial in Jönköping, Sweden. PHOTO: Biennelan Scenkonst

[. . .]

At each performance and with each post-show conversation, I wondered what it would be like if theaters across the United States could send productions to a central location every couple of years, not for prizes and awards, but to celebrate our own national culture, and see what’s happening elsewhere.

There are lots of obstacles, beginning with money, because it's costly to send shows and sets to other cities, or to resurrect appropriate plays a year or two after they were first presented. How would theater companies be chosen, and where would it be held? Lots of questions to be answered, but everything has to start with an idea.

Quiet Americans? Jay Handelman, Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, and Jonathan
Abarbanel just before the General Assembly of the Beijing World Congress

JONATHAN ABARBANEL, JAY HANDELMAN and JEFFREY ERIC JENKINS attended the 2014 IATC-AICT World Congress in Beijing, China. Jenkins attended as a member of the IATC-AICT Executive Committee, and Abarbanel and Handelman served that the official delegates from the American section of IATC-AICT. Abarbanel spoke on the impact of social media in criticism from his experienced perch as a multitasking theatre critic in Chicago. The goodwill built by the presence of the three in meetings and other events of the congress led to the re-election of the American section with an overwhelming number of votes. Ninety percent of the international ballots cast included the United States as one of the ten members of the Executive Committee. Only Serbia, which bid to host the 2016 World Congress in Belgrade, received as many votes. Also elected was the first African nation, Nigeria, and India, also a first for that country. Jenkins was elected Vice President of IATC-AICT, he is the first ATCA member to serve as an officer of IATC-AICT.

SAVAS PATSALIDIS, of Greece, has been selected as the new editor-in-chief of Critical Stages, the international web journal founded by IATC-AICT that is now in its tenth volume. The American section received much gratitude during the World Congress for financial support ($5,000) of the journal, which was provided through the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. DON RUBIN of Canada has joined the editorial team as managing editor. He will work with Patsalidis and executive editor Jenkins on strengthening the journal's business model. The journal welcomes visitors to the open-access website: www.criticalstages.org. Members are encouraged to consider suggesting possible submissions.

The Assembly of the World Congress voted to request additional, much-needed support from individual national sections. The suggested base-amount is $100. Larger sections are encouraged to give what they can on an annual basis.

STAY TUNED: News will be shared here and via the ATCA e-blast as soon as IATC-AICT has firm plans for 2015 seminars. More than a half dozen were proposed during the Assembly, but these proposals have not been fully developed. When the seminar directors make an announcement, the ATCA chair will issue an e-blast to the entire membership. Do not delay when these opportunities arise, we have had ATCA members denied when seminars fill quickly.

REPORT: Criticism Conference in Caen

Members of the AICT-IATC gathered December 14 and 15 in Caen, France, to interrogate the shifting role of dramatic criticism in the cultural discourse of various countries. Representatives traveled from China, Finland, Korea, Quebec and the United States to discuss how criticism may influence theatrical production in their respective countries—and how theatrical production may affect theatre criticism.

Primoz Jesenko (Slovenia), Jean-Pierre Han (France),
Yun-Cheol Kim (Korea) and Qing-Yan Zhang (China)

In addition to presentations by outstanding international critics such as Jean-Pierre Han (France), Primoz Jesenko (Slovenia), Yun-Cheol Kim (Korea), Matti Linnavuori (Finland), Brigitte Purkhardt (Québec), Michel Vaïs (Québec), Julie York Coppens (USA), and Qing-Yan Zhang (China), those who attended the conference were given opportunities to see thought-provoking productions from the Avignon Festival.

Dream state: The beast and the blind (from La Mort d'Adam).
Photo: Tristan Jeanne-Valès

Jean Lambert-wild, artistic director of Comédie de Caen and co-host of the conference, presented his multimedia piece La Mort d'Adam, which employs live action—overlapped by projected film—and a female narrator who sits to one side of the action as she provides context for Lambert-wild's layered images. Anyone familiar with Western philosophy and religion might easily see parallels between La Mort d'Adam and tales from the bible, from Arabian Nights, from Greek myth, from Shakespeare. In a conversation with the assembled critics the next day, Lambert-wild shared the very specific influences from his own life that led to the piece. Some critics felt that the French text (and its English surtitles) confused Lambert-wild's tale, while others thought the spoken French provided a sonic score that enhanced the director's other elements of spectacle. Facing the critics, eager for a conversation on what may or may not have worked, Lambert-wild bravely demonstrated the possibilities for which Peter Brook argued in The Empty Space (1968):

I see nothing but good in a critic plunging into our lives, meeting actors, talking, discussing, watching, intervening. I would welcome his putting his hands on the medium and attempting to work it himself. Certainly, there is a tiny social problem—how does a critic talk to someone whom he has just damned in print? . . . The criticism that theater people make of one another is usually of devastating severity—but absolutely precise. (32-33)

Art Macht Frei? Silke Mansholt in Wolfstunde.
Photo: Tristan Jeanne-Valès

When all of the papers had been presented and the critical roundtable of Lambert-wild's piece had concluded, the participants were invited to see Silke Mansholt's Wolfstunde (Wolf Lesson). Mansholt's performance piece employs minimal technical elements and ritualized manipulations of the actor's physical body—Mansholt performs with collaborator Clara Garcia Fraile—in an exploration of the internal battles of darkness and light that comprise human experience. Where Mansholt differs from many other examinations of this type is in her use of imagery that speaks specifically to her heritage as a German—and to the echoes of guilt that resonate for many of those in the post-World War II, post-Holocaust generations. Her use of the famous Auschwitz sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Make You Free), strikes chords of memory in the minds of her audience and asks an open question regarding the relationship between art and power. Ultimately, the piece seems to ask if the "power of art" is any power at all.

Throughout the four days, participants enjoyed marvelous French cuisine and wine as they engaged in ongoing discussions on theatre, criticism, culture, and politics. There were tours to sites commemorating the 1944 invasion of Normandy by Allied military forces and to a remarkable archive, in an abbey outside of Caen, that contains the works of many well known writers.

In remarks made during a discussion period following one set of papers, Lambert-wild argued strongly for an international federation of theatre-related groups dedicated to keeping the art form in the forefront of global cultural discourse. In the work generated (and seen) in Caen recently, it is safe to say that a good start has been made on getting that discourse underway.

CONFERENCE: Criticism Reflecting Nations’ Theater?


From JEAN-PIERRE HAN, Vice President of AICT-IATC

Abbazia aux Hommes, Caen



Does your country’s dramatic criticism reflect your national theatre?

La Comédie de Caen

(the National Center for Drama, Normandy)

and

the International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC)

present

An International Conference

December 14 and 15, 2010

Organizers of this conference invite presentations, of up to 15 minutes in length, that discuss the state of drama criticism and theatrical production in the presenter’s home country. What are the links—or interferences—between dramatic criticism and the development of theatrical production? Does dramatic criticism participate in the chain of theatrical creation? If criticism has a role, how does that interaction occur?

The conference, including a series of roundtable discussions, will be held December 14 and 15 at the Theater of Caen. Ten contributions by critics are planned. Roundtable discussions will focus on shows seen locally and on dramatic criticism from the Internet (blogs, etc.).

La Comédie de Caen

International guests are invited from Monday, December 13 until Friday, December 17. 

During the stay in Caen, guest critics will have the opportunity to attend two plays presented in the official programming of the Avignon Festival :

• La Mort d’Adam, by Jean Lambert-wild, director of the National Center for Drama in Normandy. Patrice Pavis wrote of the productions that “in spite of the complexity [of its] device, of the multitude of tracks and interpretations, this play gives an impression of lightness, harmony and humor. An impression certainly engendered by the very mastered configuration of each of the components (read text, high-definition video, music, magic, photography) and their combination in the production.”
• Wolfstunde, by Silke Mansholt. Performer Mansholt raises questions, in Wolfstunde (Wolflesson), on the wolf that is inside each of us, on the dark part of each individual and the battle between the dark part and the lighter, human part. Based on Mansholt’s personal experience, the work questions the power and impotence of art. Is art free? Are we? If there are, in our contemporary world, wolves and scapegoats, are we wolves or scapegoats? If we are trying to be what we do not want to be, is the wolf transformed into a scapegoat—or is the scapegoat transformed into a wolf? (Adapted from the Festival d’Avignon website)

Participants may also become familiar with the IMEC (Memory Institute of the Contemporary Edition) which possesses archives of such writers and artists as Jean Genet, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Kateb Yacine, Michel Vinaver, Jerzy Grotowski, Antoine Vitez, Alain Françon, and many others.

Deadline for application is 16 November 2010.

Jean Lambert-wild,
Director, National Center for Drama in Normandy

Jean-Pierre Han
Vice President, AICT-IATC
jp.han@free.fr