|
What is a Polydrama ?
Sobol
A "Polydrama" is a drama which, first of all, doesn´t
attribute much importance to a storyline, and disregards the
storyline as an important fact. A Polydrama supposes that
truth resides in a comprehensive structure of the entire story.
And it does not matter in what way you are progressing or
surfing through the story. First of all: truth resides in
every single moment there. So every episode is as important
as the entire story. Every episode is a world in itself, and
the order of the episodes is not important. So it supposes
or it presupposes that it is not going from A to B to C that
is important, but the fact that you have the twentytwo letters
of the alphabet in front of you, and that you can do with
them whatever you want. You can either put B before A, or
C after A, and so on.
I think it all becomes clearer when we are thinking of the
Internet as a world in which we are evolving, and we are free
to surf in it wherever our interest takes us. In the Internet,
for instance, there is no chronological order. It does not
matter when a document or a location has been put or opened
in the Internet. It does not matter. The meaning of the Internet
as a phenomenon is exactly the fact that you can surf through
it according to your interest. And by becoming in that way
very active - or interactive - with the media. You are learning
or finding out or experiencing whatever has a meaning for
you, and not a meaning in itself. A Polydrama denies the idea
of the meaning in itself. There is no meaning in itself, there
is only meaning where someone is looking for meaning. And
if someone is looking for meaning, he is looking for meaning
from his special individual point of view, and from his own
needs. All these premises are putting the fundamentals of
the aestetics of a Polydrama.
We are supposing that the spectator who comes to that event,
from the very first moment when he is confronted with, let´s
say, three different Almas, with Mahler, with Gropius, with
Werfel, each spectator will have his inclinations. Someone
will say: "I want to follow this Alma, she interests
me.", or "I want to follow Werfel, he interests
me, this guy", or Mahler or whatsoever. And from that
moment on the spectator must trust only his own or her own
feelings, her own inclinations, and her own urges and instincts.
In an ordinary, conventional drama or film we are seated
very passively in our seat in a theater, and we are confronted
with events that are being processed before our eyes. And
all we can do is either choose not to look or to look. Sometimes
to fall asleep, sometimes to look into a certain corner, and
to deny the rest, sometimes we are taken with the entire picture.
But we are not allowed to give free and full power to our
own instincts. In a Polydrama the difference is that from
the very first moment as a spectator, you are invited to become
very much yourself, so to speak. And to feel what interests
you in that story. And then to follow your own line in it.
I think that it is important in that sense, and may finally
make people understand, that the linear way of telling a story
or a storyline is the most artificial thing one can imagine.
There is no storyline in life. There is no storyline, there
are only moments. And the moments are not really connected
with one another. - We finish a conversation in a room, we
go to the other room, and suddenly the door closes before
us, and before we know we are making love with someone. And
the person who was a minute before having a very serious discourse
about the European Market or the Maastreecht agreements says:
"excuse me", he goes to the other room, and he makes
love to someone. And I think if you can follow a person to
that other room then you get the meaning of a Polydrama.
For me the form that we have found together in that work
here is so exciting, because it opens a totally new fields
of possibilities for the dramatic expression. It is a new
kind of medium. It is not exactly theatre, it is not exactly
cinema, it is somewhere between the two. It goes beyond, it
transcends both, theatre and cinema, in a way. I feel that
with that form of a Polydrama we are tackling some new possibilities,
and we have discovered maybe a new form of dramatic expression.
> Our experience with the audience
|
