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Our experience with the audience
It is amazing what "ALMA" makes to the audience,
and how the audience reacts. And what kind of an experience
it gives to the audience. They can choose their angle of observation,
their distance from the object, move around, move in and out,
zoom in and out during the scene, follow an actress throughout
the scene, sometimes travel with her, and so on. And it influences
the way of acting also. It´s a new way of acting. It
has nothing to do anymore with any imitation of life or any
"method acting" or any projection which we have
in the theatre. Or any respect of a frame, that we must have
when we are shooting a film. Nothing of all that. It is like
really living in a certain intensity, which is more than ordinary
life. It is living a moment, and letting others peep into
it or observe it. It creates a new kind of reality. It has
nothing to do with the illusion of theatre or with cinema.
It has nothing to do with the aesthetic distance. There is
almost no aesthetic distance when you watch the scenes. You
are so close to the actors, you are in the room with them,
you are sharing the space with them, there is no fourth wall.
And yet you are not there for them, for the actors. It is
amazing. I am not capable to describe or to define all the
aspects of that experience, but it seems to me a very, very
meaningful experience in the dramatic arts.
Paulus Manker
It is so unusual that some people can´t cope with it.
They sit there like petrified since they are not used to take
responsibility for their own interests and instincts. They
are used to their seats as a subscriber, they are used that
the lights go out, and somewhere in front of them, something
takers place, in one of that old, not contemporary spaces
which the most of our theatres are. They are not from our
time, they are overworn, they are not very useful for most
of the subjects we are obliged to tell nowadays. That is another
experience. Therefore some people are really petrified by
the offer of that evening.
Joshua Sobol
What surprised me, I must say, was the fact that the "Polydrama"
was recieved by the crushing majority of the audience with
great enthusiasm. I was expecting much more reserved reception
on the part of the audience. I was afraid. I must say that
I had these apprehensions in the beginning when we were talking
about that form, and it was absolutely unclear how they were
going to react. I could imagine an audience falling back,
and saying: "No, no, no, I am not going into that kind
of experience, I don´t want it!" Also I didn´t
know how the audience will react to the situation where they
are taken. They are deprived of the illusionistic attributes
of a stage, when they are deprived of the aesthetic distance.
I didn´t know how they will react. And yet, what I see
is: They are ready. They are ready to take it. And they are
watching it with great fascination ? I was watching the audience,
too. I think we are going a way beyond what Brecht was dreaming
with the "epic theatre". It has a feeling of "epic
theatre" in a way: We are telling a story, quite a huge
story. We are using all kinds of means to tell the story.
There are the actors, there is the smell, there is the food
being cooked. There is the feeling that so many things are
happening at the same time, which you cannot watch. And that
is also an experience. You become aware that you are not omnipresent.
And if you are not omnipresent, you are not omniscient, and
you are not omnipotent. You have very strong experience of
your own, you become very humble, because you realize that
you will never see everything at the same time. And you will
never see everything. And even if you see, if you go many
times, you will never have the same combination of scenes,
which also ends up to a certain meaning.
I had the night before yesterday a special experience. I followed
Werfel at a certain point, and came out towards the end of
the first act, the first half - and all of a sudden I saw
for the first time the burial cortége, you know, Mahler´s
funeral, walking at a distance there, in field, and the lights
of the torches showed through the windows of the house, of
the walk.
It was of such serial beauty that moment! And all of a sudden
I saw old Alma standing there in the field, hardly lit, and
I realized that Mahler was standing opposite her, at a distance
of some fifty meters or so. And it was raining outside. And
that was an event of pure beauty all of a sudden within all
that experience. It had no text, it had nothing - it was an
event.
< What
is a Polydrama?
> Genesis
of the play
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