Giulio Cesare by Socíetas Raffaello Sanzio at Tegners Museum

Dramatic intervention on W. Shakespeare

SocĂŹetas Raffaello Sanzio

4-5-6 AUGUST 2016 R U D O L P H T E G N E R S M U S E U M & S TAT U E P A R K

In July 1999, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio presented Giulio Cesare (1997) at Kanonhallen in Copenhagen. Two years previously, the company had presented another Shakespeare production at Kanonhallen, Amleto (1990). The way in which Socìetas tackled Shakespeare was at the same time an immensely concrete reading of Shakespeare’s works, bordering on nerdy, and a radically different scenic approach to the work. Hamlet was portrayed as an autistic young man trapped in his own subjectivity unable to communicate with the world around him. He fired a pistol randomly, relieved himself of his bodily fluids in front of an audience that was severely challenged by its predefined expectations about what theatre and dramaturgy is and could be.

In Amleto, the institution ‘the audience’ was represented by a clapping machine, in Giulio Cesare, the entire second act was performed in a burnt down theatre.

It was also the rhetoric and the way in which words were spoken in Giulio Cesare that caught Socìetas’ interest. An interest that unfolded further in Voyage au bout de la nuit (1999), where the artists, with their point of departure in Celine’s novel, circled around the unarticulate language between the words. In the 00’s, their work became more visual, but still with a solid anchor in world literature.

Giulio Cesare was something special. The audience remained seated in the theatre long after the show ended, touched or struck by something that cannot be easily explained other than by the fact that the artistic forces behind the then Socìetas: Chiara Guidi, Claudia Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci and Scott Gibbons, were all uncompromising authorities within the very broad artistic field that theatre encompasses, and that this exact production had managed to create something, a totality that best can be compared with a cathedral.

In recent years, Romeo Castellucci has returned to two of the 90’s pieces.

Orestea (1995), a re-run that Romeo Castellucci set up in a 1:1 version in 2015, and the present version of Giulio Cesare.

Romeo Castellucci calls the version a non-nostalgic return visit, and it will be site-specific – unlike the original version, which was performed in a theatre.

Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950) is perhaps the most dominant sculptor in Elsinore’s public spaces. A number of his sculptures feature in Hamlet’s city, including Hamlet and Ofelia. The search for the ideal space, which could do Romeo Castellucci’s artistic ambitions justice, was close to being abandoned when Rudolph Tegners Museum was suggested.

Romeo Castellucci was thrilled with both the park and museum, and the audience can expect not only an encounter with one of the most interesting artists of our time and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but also with the works of Rudolph Tegner, the landscape and the museum, which provide the setting for a great many of his pieces.

This guest performance, presented by PASSAGE – International street theatre festival, would not be possible without the invaluable support and encouragement from the Municipality (Elsinore), Gribskov Municipality, HamletScenen and Rudolph Tegners Museum & Statuepark.

A big thank you must also be extended to Cantabile 2, Copenhagen International Theatre, Aarhus Festival and others who have contributed to the dissemination of the work of Socìetas Raffello Sanzio in Denmark.

S O C Ì E TA S R A F F A E L L O S A N Z I O BIOGRAPHY W W W. R A F F A E L L O S A N Z I O . O R G

The Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, since 1981, includes Romeo Castellucci (1960), Chiara Guidi (1960) and Claudia Castellucci (1958) who share an idea of the theatre based on a predominant plastic and sound dimension, which – during the first few years – they also interpreted. Romeo Castellucci is an author and director; he is also in charge of staging, costumes and lighting design, according to a unified principle of dramatic compositions, which also includes the graphics for books and programmes of the Socìetas. Chiara Guidi, author and director of a sound theatre, has been in charge of the dramatic rhythm and vocality of almost all performances by the Socìetas; she is interested in an art shared with children, which is why in the 1990s she started an experimental children’s theatre school; she directs the performances which are held at Teatro Comandini, an old iron turning school which in 1989 became the Company’s headquarters. Claudia Castellucci is a teacher, decorator, author of some dramatic and theoretical texts; she has started numerous free research school cycles based on gymnastics and philosophy.

The Socìetas has produced performances which have been staged all over the world in major international festivals and theatres: Santa Sofia, 1986; La Discesa di Inanna, 1989; Gilgamesh, 1990; Amleto.

La veemente esteriorità della morte di un mollusco, 1992; Masoch. I trionfi del teatro come potenza passiva, colpa, sconfitta, 1993; also that year, Hänsel e Gretel, a children’s play, the same as Buchettino, 1994 and Pelle d’Asino, 1998.

Then Orestea (una commedia organica?), 1995; Giulio Cesare, 1997; Genesi, 1999; Voyage au bout de la nuit, 1999; and Il Combattimento, with music by Claudio Monteverdi and Scott Gibbons.

Tragedia Endogonidia, 2002-2004, is a cycle consisting of eleven episodes named after as many cities; it is a gigantic overview of tragedy in Western reality, a journey through the main cities in Europe which became the focus of drama. After this intensely participated enterprise, the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio has been following an individual work specification by the founding artists.

TEXT BY PIERSANDRA DI MATTEO

G I U L I O C E S A R E . S PA R E D PA R TS D R A M AT I C I N T E R V E N T I O N O N W. S H A K E S P E A R E C O N C E I V I N G A N D S TA G I N G

BY ROMEO CASTELLUCCI With GIULIO CESARE Gianni Plazzi MARCO ANTONIO Dalmazio Masini …VSKJI Sergio Scarlatella DIRECTOR ASSISTANT Silvano Voltolina SOUND TECHNICIAN Andrea Melega PRODUCTION Benedetta Briglia PROMOTION + COMMUNICATION Valentina Bertolino, Gilda Biasini ADMINISTRATION Michela Medri, Elisa Bruno, Simona Barducci ECONOMIC CONSULTATION Massimiliano Coli

A revisitation of Julius Caesar, staged for the first time by the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio in 1997, cannot be mistaken for a mere indulgence in nostalgia or a simple display of vanity.

The separate discourses of “…vskij” and Marco Antonio are now seen directly facing one another, like two living nuclei. These pieces are detached, as though they alluded to a whole but, at the same time, went beyond it functionally.

These finely chiselled images of a drama inherent to the voice act out a struggle against the power shrouded by the force of words. The

topology of (the actor’s) speech, entirely enveloped by language and its machines, and its compromise with rhetoric, represent the two extremes of a polarity whose form consists of moulds and imprints. At the centre lies the body – above all, the locutionary organs.

On one side: the protagonist of “…vskij”, a veiled allusion to one of the founding fathers of theatre, inserts an endoscopic video camera in his nasal cavity until it reaches the glottis. The path followed by the endoscope is projected on a circular screen, visualising a reverse voyage of voice production that continues until it reaches the vocal cords. This long tube acts as a channel for breath and for the words of the dialogue between Flavio, Marullo and Ciabattino, up to the curtain of flesh that shows the sexual origin of words; this tautological limit of the voice coincides with the audible-visible vibration of the oral cavity. An absolute tattoo on phonation.

From above: Marco Antonio has undergone a laryngectomy. The funeral oration at the rhetorical peak of the drama is elevated, as though on a pedestal, and a singular technique of vocal emission gives tension to this monument. The voice, deprived of its fleshy throat, becomes an oesophageal pulsation, a pure commotion of vibration.

Any articulation of meaning becomes blurred and disappears: only vocal modulation remains, already half gone and, suddenly, absorbed by bodily noises. Speech coming out of the open throat now becomes the exoskeleton of rhetorical persuasion, and discourse literally coincides with an utterance from a “wound”, the only phonation that can support the tale told by Giulio Cesare’s body, perforated by “mute mouths”. This body without the organ of language (the vocal cords) is the emblem of a body that is eloquent in itself, like an “I” invaded by a corpse perched on the throne of speech in a naked exhibition of the scourged body.

In a negative theology of the voice, the hole through which Marco Antonio’s breath passes, offers us a glimpse of the (absent) inverted throat of “…vskij”.

BY ROLF HEIM AND JENS FRIMANN HANSEN

REBELLING AGAINST THE TRADITIONAL T H E AT R E P AT H O S E X C E R P T S F R O M C O N V E R S AT I O N S WITH ROMEO CASTELLUCCI J U LY 1 9 9 9 / K A N O N H A L L E N / C O P E N H A G E N

What has the work process been like during the creation of this piece?

It always starts with a constant, daily effort to gather ideas and thoughts that are then written down in a notebook. Once this process has gone on for about a year, I go through the notes and search for a specific feeling, a title, which can set the exact tone for these records. We do not select the text until this initial process is completed.

In the second phase, we work with the selected text and it is often more a working against the text, where it is broken down - out of respect for the contents of the text. Working against the text should be understood as working down to the roots and the basic idea of the text, it is a philological language process, a very precise process that aims to gain insight into all the details of the text’s possible movements - in order to understand its scope and capacity fully. In the second phase, the text and my idea notebook confront each other in an almost violent way. What remains is a theatrical action - neither text nor idea book, but theatre. The initial phases of the work are very cognitive,

because there are references to the history of theatre, to visual art and to literature, but this is all blown to pieces when the physical work begins. The process and the result are different every time, therefore my work is formalistically very diverse. In this piece for example, the focus on sound has been particularly extensive, almost architectural.

In relation to the soundscape, which of course plays an incredibly important role, did you work with the sounds first and the actions afterwards, or did you create the images and actions first and then the sounds?

It varies. Some sounds come first, and those sounds trigger an action - other sounds are created as an extra layer on top of the actions and are therefore tailor-made. There is a great element of discovery during the working process, as a lot of the soundscape first emerges as real sound. Sometimes I even use a sound that comes from outside on the street, outside of the theatre space. A sound that makes an impact on me, written down in my notebook and becomes an idea to be pursued.

My starting point is that each and every dramaturgical element, including music and sound, must have a bodily expression.

When sound has a body, it also has a counterpart in the form of a spirit and these are the two components that communicate: sensory perception and emotion. Some of the sounds are perceived as opposites to what is going on, while others fit in perfectly with the actions.

There is absolutely no hierarchy between the actions, text and sound; it should be a progressive wave of activity. In order to delineate the closest graphic progression in the soundscape, it is very important to find an overall rhythm. One of the greatest adventures in theatre is the search for the uncharted rhythm.

How do you choose the cast for your performances?

They choose me. I mean that quite literally. Some people perceive my choices as provocative, but that is alien to me. The actors are each completely necessary and unique, strange existences. Existences defined by Shakespeare. One can say that the actors physically crystallise some of the themes, which are present in the piece. It is dreadful to accentuate normality; the actors are the expression of a deeper beauty to be found at the core of Shakespeare’s text.

One example is Marco Antonio’s voice, him without a larynx. It had to be a persuasive voice with great expressive power, but it

also had to be a different voice, a voice that encapsulates the essence of having been wounded, of being stabbed, because Marco Antonio’s entire speech is about the murder of Caesar. Finally, when he talks about Caesar’s wounds and says: ”Poor poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me”, these words should be accentuated, and if it is possible to drop the element of sedation that lies in this tradition, the words will really come to life and become talking mouths.

One might say that working with voices becomes a theme throughout the piece?

Shakespeare’s drama is, from start to finish, imbued with the ancient rhetoric’s complexity. Rhetoric’s problem is the form - rhetoric becomes pure music on a certain level. Therefore, working with the voice is important.

For example, the vocal cords shown at the start present a very rich and complex image. At the beginning of the piece, the senator speaks to the masses, and the first image offered to the audience about rhetoric is turned around, it is an internal image of the vocal cords. It is like turning a sock inside out. An internal expression instead of an external one, an inner path.

It is a direct reference to Stanislavskij who talks about the inner path of acting and the person is possibly Stanislavskij

in an almost pornographically intimate representation. A Socratic irony, which shows the most extreme consequences of Stanislavskij’s inner path, and the image of the vocal cords, muscles contracting, is the proof that the voice is a machine. It is not only an expression for the spirit like Western tradition has told us. The essence of the first act is that these actors who play political stakeholders in the social and political arena, are talking machines.

The first act thematises the rhetorical problem and ends with an actor who has no vocal cords. It is a triumphant image where the soul returns to the body.

Stanislavskij’s revolt is a rebellion against the traditional theatre’s way of being pathetic. A revolt against the classic traditional presentation, and instead turns to something in the future. Like in Las Meninas by Velázquez that uses the classical form, but at the same time creates a crisis.

GIULIO CESARE

BY SOCÍETAS RAFFAELLO SANZIO IS PRESENTED BY PASSAGE – INTERNATIONAL STREET THEATRE FESTIVAL

AS A PART OF THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF SHAKESPEARE’S DEATH IN 2016 IN COOPERATION WITH GRIBSKOV TEATER RUDOLPH TEGNERS MUSEUM & SKULPTURPARK HAMLETSCENEN

Gribskov

Teater

www.homeofhamlet.com PASSAGE – INTERNATIONAL STREET THEATRE FESTIVAL ELSINORE / HELSINGBORG IS PRESENTED BY

PROGRAMME > HELSINGØR TEATER www.helsingor-teater.dk EDITING > Ann-Jette Caron GRAPHIC DESIGN > www.l-grafikdesign.com TRANSLATION > LITERALLY + Brent Waterhouse PHOTO > Luca Del Pia + Guido Mencari + Henrik Sylvest + Jens Frimann Hansen

I N T E R N AT I O N A L G U E S T P E R F O R M A N C E P R E S E N T E D B Y PA S S A G E F E ST I VA L A N D PA R T N E R S T I C K E TS > W W W. B I LL E T T E N . D K