Mickery Theater : An Imperfect Archaeology [1 ed.] 9789048514106, 9789089643117

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Amsterdam University Press

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MICKERY THEATER AN IMPERFECT ARCHAEOLOGY MIKE PEARSON

REVIEWS BY JAC HEIJER AND LOEK ZONNEVELD

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

MICKERY THEATER

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

Amsterdam University Press

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

MICKERY THEATER AN IMPERFECT ARCHAEOLOGY MIKE PEARSON

REVIEWS BY JAC HEIJER AND LOEK ZONNEVELD

Translated by Paul Evans

CONTENTS Acknowledgements

9

Foreword by Sijbolt Noorda

11

Probably not… an introduction

13

by Arthur Sonnen and Otto Romijn Prologue a) A short history b) A task

20

c) A method

22 22 22 24 24 25 25 28 29 32

i) Analects

An action



A story



A photograph



Coda

ii) Archaeology iii) Oral history iv) All that remains… d) Structure

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1 Ritsaert ten Cate 2 In the attic 3 Otto Romijn 4 In the archive I 5 Frans de la Haye 6 In the archive II 7 Peter Schreiber 8 A building 9 Max Arian 10 A journal article 11 Failed conversations 12 Reviews 13 Jim Clayburgh 14 Reviews – The Performance Group 15 Photographs 16 Rob Klinkenberg 17 Reports 18 Erica Bilder 19 A lecture

34 36 39 42 46 50 54 59 65 69 71 75 79 83 87 91 94 98 102

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2 0 Titus Muizelaar 21 In his own words 22 Colleen Scott 23 A video 24 Janek Alexander 25 A production programme 26 Jan Lauwers 27 A letter 28 Peter Sellars 29 A research project 30 The producers a Hugo de Greef b Tom Stromberg 31 A workbook 32 Jan Zoet 33 A magazine 34 Marijke Hoogenboom 35 A book chapter 36 Early days a Loek van der Sande b Ruud Engelander c Pip Simmons 37 Another video 38 A keynote 39 Epilogues

105 108 113 116 120 124 128 131 134 138

Postscript A quest

186 187

142 144 147 150 154 157 161 164 168 173 173 176 181

The reviews of Jac Heijer

translated by Paul Evans

1970 1 La MaMa Repertory Company, USA, Rat’s Mass

191

1971 2 Traverse Workshop Company, UK, Our Sunday Times

193

1972 3 Grupo Tse, Argentina/France, The History of the Theatre

195

4 The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, UK, The George Jackson

196

Black and White Minstrel Show 5 Tenjo Sajiki, Japan, Ahen–Senso (Opium War)

198

1973 6 The Combination, UK, Watch it all come down 200 7 Theaterschool, Netherlands, The Ignorant and the Insane 202

1974 8 Camera Obscura, Netherlands, Measure for Measure 9 Children of the Night, Netherlands/UK, Dracula

203 206

1975 1 0 Concept Theatre, USA/Netherlands, Fairground 208 11 The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, Netherlands/UK, An die Musik 209 12 ‘Jostling for Theatre in Nancy’ 211 13 ‘The Concise History of a World Theatre Festival: 216 Fear and Loathing in Nancy’ 14 Tenjo Sajiki, Japan 219 15 ‘Report of a Romance: 10 Years of Mickery’ 221 16 ‘Jac Heijer Shares Out Prize Amongst Theatre World’ 226

1976 17 The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, UK, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man 18 Mickery, Netherlands, Folter Follies 19 Elephant Theatre, Hungary, De Drie Zusters (Three Sisters)

227 229 231

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1977 2 0 Squat Theatre, USA, Pig, Child, Fire! 21 Mickery, Netherlands, Vox Populi, Vox Dei 22 The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, UK, The Masque of

232 234 236

the Red Death

1978 2 3 Stuart Sherman, USA, Tenth Spectacle – Portraits of Places

239

1979 2 4 La Maschera, Italy, Frühlingserwachen 25 Mabou Mines, USA, A Prelude to Death in Venice

239 241

1980 2 6 The Wooster Group, USA, Point Judith 27 Theatre X, USA, Renovations 28 Mike Figgis, UK, Redheugh

244 246 248

1981 29 Stuart Sherman, USA, Hamlet

250

1982 30 The Wooster Group, USA, Route 1 & 9

252

1983 31 Het Trojaanse Paard/Jan Decorte, Belgium, King Lear

255

1984 3 2 Het Trojaanse Paard/Jan Decorte, Belgium, Scenes/Sprookjes 257 (Scenes/Fairytales) 33 Jan Fabre, Belgium, De Macht der Theaterlijke Dwaasheden 259 (The Power of Theatrical Madness)

1985 34 Mickery, Netherlands, Rembrandt and Hitler or Me

261

1986 3 5 Mel Andringa, USA, Sistine Floor Plan 36 The Wooster Group, USA, Road to Immortality (Part Two) –

263

L.S.D. (…Just The High Points…) 37 Mickery, Netherlands, Vespers

267 270

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1987 3 8 Needcompany, Belgium, Need to Know 39 American National Theater, USA, Ajax 40 Taganka Theater/School of Dramatic Art, USSR, Cerceau

271 273 276

1988 41 ‘The History of the Mickery Theater in Photos’ – Mickery Pictorial I: A Photographic History 1965–87

283

1989 4 2 John Jesurun, Shatterhand Massacre/Riderless Horse

286

Touching Time and Moving with the Pressure of the Times. On the last years of the Mickery Theatre

by Loek Zonneveld, translated by Paul Evans 1 Prologue – Peter Schumann’s garlic bread 2 A Man Says Goodbye To His Mother (from Bread and

289

Puppet Theatre, 1969) 3 ‘The dead body gives instruction’ – Hess Is Dead 4 ‘There’s a hole in my budget’ – Everything that rises must converge 5 Deshima, a ‘poetic documentary’ by Ping Chong 6 Am I here for them or are they here for me? – You – The City, Fiona Templeton 7 The Welcomed Death – Julius Caesar by Needcompany 8 ‘She left no traces, like water on the sand’ – She Who WAS Once the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife by Love Theatre 9 ‘No grave can save me from my youth’ – BAK-Truppen performs When We Dead Awaken by Ibsen 10 ‘Work in progress’ is no longer a process, it is a product –Touch Time, a sail past by Mickery, not a farewell, May 1991 11 Anne Frank – The Exhibition, Toneelgroep Amsterdam 12 ‘Are you in character?’ ‘Oh, no, not at all!’ – Brace Up! by The Wooster Group 13 Stay on a safety island or take part in the traffic – epilogue

290 291

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Index

293 294 296 296 298 299

301 305 306 308

310

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Acknowledgements This book has been long in its development; the research and writing have taken over three years to complete. During that period I have been assisted and guided by many individuals whom I need to thank. I owe a huge debt to all my conversation partners who generously gave their time, not only to speak to me but also to amend and correct my accounts of our meetings: Otto Romijn, Frans de la Haye, Peter Schreiber, Max Arian, Jim Clayburgh, Rob Klinkenberg, Titus Muizelaar, Janek Alexander, Jan Lauwers, Peter Sellars, Hugo de Greef, Tom Stromberg, Jan Zoet, Loek van der Sande; especially Ruud Engelander for his close reading of the text and Erica Bilder who pursued leads and encountered dead ends on my behalf. And to Arthur Sonnen, Otto Romijn and Sijbolt Noorda for their insightful opening words. Mickery Theater. An Imperfect Archaeology includes a selection of the late Jac Heijer’s reviews of Mickery productions translated into English for the first time, and of Loek Zonneveld’s poignant accounts of the final period at Mickery, for which my sincerest thanks is due. Paul Evans has provided sensitive and eloquent translations of both sets of texts, without which the volume would be much the poorer. I am also delighted to incorporate many evocative photographs by Bob van Danzig from his unique record of Mickery’s past. I appreciate the permission to include these images, as well as those of the late Maria Austria and Oscar van Alphen. To Rob Klinkenberg for his efforts in reading and offering crucial suggestions on the first draft. I am pleased to include several of his recommended amendments. To uk photographers Steve Allison and Pete Telfer. To the staff of the Netherlands Theatre Institute (tin), particularly Radboud Kuypers, for their assistance in making the Mickery archive available and for preparing the majority of the photographs included here. To the staff of Rozentheater for allowing us to tour the premises searching for traces of Mickery. To Maaike Groot and publisher Anniek Meinders and the editorial staff at Amsterdam University Press – desk editor Christine Waslander, copy editor Stephanie Harmon and production manager Marianne de Raad – for the tireless and substantial attention they have given to the publication of the book; and to designer Suzan Beijer for realising a beautiful addendum to the history of Mickery. To Professors Marijke Hoogenboom and Maaike Bleeker for their continuing support – in many different ways – in bringing the work to fruition.

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To Colleen Scott for her active and unswerving encouragement and offer of guidance in the most difficult of circumstances. And to Arthur Sonnen who proposed the idea and who, from the first to last, with Otto Romijn, has never wavered in his singular commitment to the project. Mickery Theater. An Imperfect Archaeology is an initiative of Stichting Mickery Memorial. Its publication is only made possible through funding from Fonds Podium Kunsten, Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds, Theater Instituut Nederland and the Holland Festival, whose support I acknowledge with gratitude. Mickery Theater results from research completed during an academic sabbatical funded by my institution Aberystwyth University and by the uk Arts and Humanities Research Council. I gratefully acknowledge their support also. Mickery Theater remembers the producer Eva Diegritz who wrote a significant report on Mickery in 1989, and who died suddenly in 2009.

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Mickery Theater is dedicated to Ritsaert ten Cate who passed away during its writing. It was a privilege to meet with him during his final months, and to encounter once more a vision that remained undimmed and uncompromised.

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Foreword Mickery with hindsight The location is Loenersloot, the time a spring evening in 1968. Amsterdam students are having a party here. I forget why, probably just for the fun of it, and I have only vague memories of what went on. Later I deduced it must have been at the Mickery place and the guy in charge must have been Ritsaert ten Cate, who later became one of my dearest friends. The occasion gained even more meaning: it was then and there that I met the woman who was to become the mother of my daughters. Mickery is well known in the Netherlands in the 70s and 80s. Well known among aficionados, yet by no means popular in the usual sense, it was a community experience for habitués, visitors and theatre makers alike. It wasn’t a place that attracted huge crowds: I remember more shows with an audience of tens rather than of hundreds. Probably more people would have been fans and regular visitors, had they known that Mickery would become one of those places where one ought to have been. Now many people vocally regret having missed it, including local art authorities, reviewers and sponsors. By many of those who do attend, Mickery is valued for its foreignness, or better stated: its internationality. It is almost the only place at the time in Holland where international shows could be seen on a regular basis – to get a break from traditional Dutch-language and standard repertoire theatre, where what was quite common in the movies and the music scene is completely absent. In Mickery’s final years its international character was the main reason the board (of which I then was a member) hesitated to draw the line and stop trying to convince Ten Cate that there could be a further future for Mickery. If this place were gone, where in Holland would international theatre go? Yet with hindsight, he was right: even with the right kind of money the Mickery international theatre workshop could not exist now. Its lifetime was over. With hindsight, it’s no surprise that the grandson of a great stage actor and of a rich industrialist who was also an art collector would become an international theatre maker and entrepreneur. It came to him as a discovery, a gift life brought to him. But the family tradition wasn’t a point of departure, it was a counterpoint. Ten Cate’s background epitomised established society and its received ideas and communications. He wasn’t driven away from it by political or sociological analysis and motivation. For him it was a matter of creating a life of his own, a life that reflected his personal choice and values. Ideology had nothing to do with any of it. That, I believe, is how he came to the theatre and why theatre suited him as it did. His dedication to the theatre was truly and naturally linked to his

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personal trajectory. How else could his voice and his vision be so natural, so true to life? My own world is that of the university. In its core and scope, academia knows no national boundaries. Science is an international endeavour, not to be locked up in national languages on national stages. Its true practitioners are motivated by inner drives, be they of curiosity or a quest for truth, or rather for the other side of established convention. Their profession is their life, not the other way round. As a university president, I have had the privilege of knowing and working with scholars of this true variety. In many conversations with Ritsaert ten Cate, both in his Mickery years and at DasArts and later, in his studio, I was often struck by the parallels between academia and the arts, in both their superficial and their profound manifestations. With hindsight, understanding this has led me to understand and even more greatly value his drive and his talents. And it led me to admire the sprezzatura with which he did what he did: create a life for himself while he created opportunities for many others to do likewise. Speaking for myself, he helped me to become a better man – something I could never have guessed would happen back in 1968 during that spring evening in Loenersloot. I welcome this book as much for its structure as for its message. The archaeology metaphor is a quite suitable manner to evoke the Mickery experience and the Ten Cate creation. I congratulate the author on the artful way in which he has kept his balance on many tricky paths. Well done.

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Sijbolt Noorda

12

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Probably not… an introduction The introduction to these archaeological excavations must, of course, ­begin with Ritsaert ten Cate’s mantra: ‘Probably not…’ which denotes the progressive character of his work. Every experience in his Mickery Theatre was an invitation for further exploration. No final conclusion was ever trotted out, at most a direction, a clarification, an approach; what was important in his work was an inventory of possibilities. Even a possible scenario for treating a certain problem was shunned; challenge was the aim. The jury report of the Sphinx Culture Prize, which he won in Maastricht in 1996, stated: ‘Ten Cate’s methods are both remarkable and indirect, but this is not that strange if you consider that the translation of the Greek word “methodos” is: “detour”. The “Ten Cate method” has a great deal in common with this original Greek meaning. A direct answer is a rarity with Ten Cate. He is more inclined to complicate an issue. He provides many possibilities, directions and formulations in an approach to a problem. The inquisitor is personally responsible for the next step in the reasoning. And gradually the eyes are opened.’ Actually, it is just the same with this book: it offers discoveries, causes, surprises and insights, but also creates an intense need to plough further into Mickery’s theatrical realm, which stretches out over all continents; the avant-garde from Britain and America was able to survive in Loenersloot and on the Rozengracht in Amsterdam, and there was space for developments from Kenya to Iceland, from Hawaiian dancers to Welsh landscape artists. The Japanese avant-garde presented an entirely different view of the audience. In the famous Fairground projects, the audience was hauled through the space, to be confronted here or there by a scene or tableau. This all contributed to transformations that took place in Dutch theatre between 1966 and 1991. Mickery initiated a fundamentally different representation. This was desperately needed at a time when a new manner of thinking about the function of art, and particularly theatre, made its appearance in society. This was something new in the Netherlands: getting the audience to think. Everything that the proponents of theatre innovation championed in the theatre in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s was put into practice in Mickery, without great ideological debates, but in a practical way and commencing with the stimulation of people’s imaginative capacity. Ritsaert ten Cate and his Mickery are under threat of being forgotten, including by Dutch theatre makers. This is unjust and suggests a careless treatment of Dutch theatre history. And because the Erasmus Foundation never awarded its most important prize to Ten Cate, and no book or study existed on Mickery, it became essential to explore how to proceed with

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such a project, together with the most important international theatre man that the Netherlands has ever produced. Ritsaert ten Cate e-mailed about this on 5 September 2005: Oh, maybe it’s really quite simple. You just start with groups, a sort of railway junction of items, each with a characteristic of a performance, but also groups that are picked out with a key function for the time, you could put different reliable figures on that, and primarily threaten that they be short and concise, no new flood of criticism; if that’s the guideline you just need to think up a few themes, your own passion relationship subsidisers, and last but not least relationships, audience, presentation and performance constructions, just to mention a few things and you can have your own group of those dear to you write an essay, chapter or whatever. Plenty of photos if needed. In short, divided up like that, there still seems to be pleasure to be had, in short, just see. Once again, that Saturday was lovely, affectionately […], R A short e-mail amongst many other items of correspondence:

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8 February 2007 Just a thought: hasn’t that book already been around for ages? You only have to translate Jac [Heijer]’s reviews and opinion pieces and you’ll have the whole development. It’s just an idea, but it really is a very good idea. Affectionately, Ritsaert It would take until 2007 before an actual plan was discussed over English Tea, because with Ten Cate everything needed to have style.

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On 13 June 2007 he e-mailed: Wonderful table, wonderful crockery, delicious tea, scones, clotted cream, jam, flan, I mean worthy of a better cause, I sometimes think. It is lovely to see you operate with love and conviction and none of your cards on the table. You’ll have to forgive me if I sometimes come across facetiously and pull out all the stops with all that beautiful stuff, book, research, marathon interviews (two, my goodness), film, exhibition, I mean there’s no end to it. You’ll have to forgive me if I say that you were right to sug-

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gest that you could probably confer a good deal quicker if I were not there. Good idea, it seems. […]. Just see. Love and thanks, and greetings to you both, Ritsaert The dreamt-of author was finally Mike Pearson, who had both performed in the theatre and collaborated with Mickery and in the meantime had ­become a professor at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. The first section of this book contains his archaeological excavations; the second section consists of the reviews of Jac Heijer, supplemented in the last two years by Loek Zonneveld. And in order to organise the entire project the Mickery Memorial Foundation was established by Arthur Sonnen and Otto Romijn, a former staff member of Mickery who received an appeal from Ritsaert to keep that inspired lunatic Arthur Sonnen on the straight and narrow. Mickery was the first theatre that made internationalisation its most important task, long before this was formulated as the policy objective by the Ministry of Culture and set in the subsidy provisions. In 1969, Minister of Culture Klompé very clearly saw the importance of this and decided to award Mickery a subsidy. She had been the first minister since the Second World War who felt that culture cannot be viewed separately from social developments. The conclusion of the jury report for the Sphinx Prize formulated ­R itsaert’s motivations: ‘Ten Cate attempts to bring clarity to that part of the mystery of the Sphinx that is never asked for: the darkness that lies between evening and morning. The part of man from which disasters stem.’ When in 1991, after 25 years, the last Mickery project, Touch Time, was announced, Ten Cate wrote about the changed relationships between the government and the arts: ‘I have grave doubts about what the long-term consequences of all this might be in regards to artistic, cultural growth, if only wafer-thin backing is left behind. Whoever looks at producers and presenters these days will see the faces becoming more expressionless. It is becoming increasingly difficult to guess what is going on behind that mask. We remember the themes, but they are no longer played.’ At his last appearance in Paris in January 2009, on the occasion of a gigantic congress about the influence of the American avant-garde on European theatre, his speech was titled: American Theatre in Mickery 1965–1991. The Chronicle of a Love Affair. In the presence of everyone who was of international importance in the theatre, Ritsaert ten Cate drew attention to his last telephone conversation with [American artist and regular Mickery performer] Stuart Sherman, who succumbed to aids: ‘At first I didn’t know what to say, but then told him I loved him, and thanked him for all

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the beautiful work he’d given us, and for the good times, and yes, thanks for the memories, that too.’ There is no better recommendation for this book.

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Arthur Sonnen and Otto Romijn

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Prologue a) A short history The bare bones… In December 1965, Ritsaert ten Cate, a film and television producer and member of a wealthy Dutch textile manufacturing family, opens a small theatre in a disused cowshed next to the farmhouse where he lives at Loenersloot, a small community in the countryside between Amsterdam and Utrecht; it is also an art gallery and there are plans for a publishing house. He calls it Mickery, a combination of his own name and that of his wife at the time, Mik Staverman – Mi(c)k and (e)R(y). His aim? We want to do things here that have not happened or could not happen anywhere else. We want to combine all art forms here. Our theatre/exhibition room must become a laboratory where artists can work together and where visitors can experience art in the truest sense of the word. (RtC in Diegritz, 1989, p. 24) His desire?

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…to revivify a stultified Dutch theatre with imported ideas; to give theatre a vitality that can be called ritual or mysterious or spiritual rather than realistic; incorporate the visual arts at a high level into decors and staging; to stimulate the imagination of spectators and spur them to formulate a vision of their own; to take on the chronically resistant class of actors and audience. (Schwartz, 1996, p.44) The theatre programme commences with Mickery’s own production of English playwright Johnny Speight’s controversial drama If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them – ‘an allegorical string of episodic vignettes confined to a graveyard’ – quickly followed by a concert by American singer Nina Simone. In 1966 Traverse Theatre from London appears with the plays Rooted and Grounded and The Local Stigmatic; they are Mickery’s first guests from abroad. In 1967 Mickery/Stichting Incidenteel Theater Experiment stages its own productions of De Meiden (The Maids) and The Dwarfs both by Jean Genet. Later that year, following an exploratory visit by its founder and director Ellen Stewart in 1966, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club brings

17

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Tom Paine (Part I) to Loenersloot whilst on tour in Europe. It is the beginning of an enduring relationship and a key moment in Mickery’s history: thereafter it will adopt La MaMa’s commitment to experimentation. And it will routinely present international work, primarily from the Englishspeaking world. Over the next six years, many of the most important companies of the nascent alternative theatre scene travel to the barn where the hospitality is always fulsome but where the performing conditions – spatial and technical – are makeshift and strictly limited. From Britain comes The People Show, The Pip Simmons Group and the Freehold Company; and from the usa, Bread and Puppet Theater, and La MaMa on several further occasions. In 1972, after a short residency in a rented church – Noorderkerk – in Amsterdam, Mickery moves to the specially converted Rozen Theater, a former cinema on Rozengracht, close to the Oud West area and the Jordaan in the city centre. Over the next 20 years, this multi-functional space will become a vital location for presenting and producing new forms of theatre, consequently nurturing the careers of significant practitioners and companies including The Wooster Group and Needcompany. Here the incidental discoveries and embryonic appreciation and understandings of processes of production and staging, proceeding from the initial experiences in Loenersloot, are formally acknowledged – they inform the structural conversion and subsequent occupancy and usage of the building. In the 1970s, Mickery hosts touring productions. It is a major port-ofcall for in-coming work to Europe that is often transferred from, or en route to, the World Theatre Festival in Nancy, France. From the outset, its programme is catholic, but also biased and marked by absences. It favours the politically inflected and actorly engaging; the idealist practices of the young acolytes of Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, for instance, rarely appear. RtC is selective in his programming choices, reflecting the political uncertainties and cultural upheavals of the period in favouring the exuberant, the provocative and the inciting: Pip Simmons’s Superman (1970) based on the comic book character features a live rock band; Simmons’s production Do It! (1971), about the activities of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and the American Yippie movement includes long sequences of group nudity; and in The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show (1972), naked performers notoriously handcuff themselves to audience members just before the interval. These performances expose Dutch audiences to significant radical practices that demand of them equally new ways of looking, experiencing and responding. Appearances at Mickery help the companies themselves to establish and enhance their reputations, both internationally and in their home countries. Mickery maintains a long-term commitment to several directors – no-

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tably Pip Simmons; Terayama Shuji with his group Tenjo Sajiki; Hungarian Peter Halasz with Elephant Theatre (1976), Squat Theatre (1978, 1983), Love Theatre (1986) – who utilise the flexible space to inspire and create peripatetic and environmental performances such as The Masque of the Red Death (Simmons, 1977) and Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/ Nuhikun (Terayama, 1978). Many visitors become leading practitioners in the field – Liz LeCompte with The Performance Group and later The Wooster Group; Ping Chong with Ping Chong and the Fiji Company, and later Ping Chong and Company; Lee Breuer and JoAnne Akalaitis with Mabou Mines; Stuart Sherman; Theodora Skipitares; and Peter Sellars who is a regular contributor to panels and audience talks. Mickery itself is renowned as a crucial locale of innovation. Its committed support helps nurture that theatre scene regarded initially as the ‘fringe’ (of the mainstream) but ultimately as a set of distinct practices with its own aesthetic priorities and economic realities. Over the winter months, performances are presented for periods ranging from one week to a month; the opening night is Tuesday. Mickery is attentive to its audiences, enhancing their understanding and appreciation through informative printed programmes and in-house journals, and frequently involving them directly – through their varying location and arrangement during performances and in the demand for their participation – as part of an extended enquiry into ‘manipulating the audience’. Manipulated in what ways? As a physical, plastic and potentially mobile entity; as witnesses to events that might turn out to be other than they at first seem; as partners in a redrawn contract of the supply and reception that might confound common conventions of theatre-going. Mickery also creates its own productions and co-productions, including Fairground (1975) with the near-legendary hovering seating units. In 1975, Theatre X from Milwaukee presents The Unnamed. Its performers will subsequently perform in Mickery productions that figure increasingly in the programme, culminating with Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985) and Vespers (1986), both directed by Ritsaert ten Cate as contributions to a second extended enquiry – ‘theatre beyond television’. In these later highly mediated productions and in the espousal in the 1980s of the new ‘Flemish wave’ – the work of Jan Fabre, and Jan Lauwers with Epigonen and Needcompany – Mickery becomes one of that circuit of venues in which HanThies Lehmann’s notion of ‘postdramatic’ theatre materialises (see Lehmann 2006). In 1987 Mickery’s administration moves to offices on Herenmarkt. The premises in Rozengracht are renamed Frau Holle and given over to use by local artists, in an act combining both magnanimous invitation and direct challenge.

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In the final period of its existence, Mickery wanders, producing work in other contexts – bringing Peter Sellars’s Ajax (1987) from the usa to the Holland Festival, staging its own History of Theatre (Part II) (1988) in Rotterdam. Mickery is now one amongst several similar European organisations, including venues directly inspired by its programming and approaches to production. Ritsaert ten Cate is a founding figure and leading voice in the Informal European Theatre Meetings gathering; his opinions and judgements are a frequent point of reference in the development of international collaboration and co-production. In the late 1980s there are plans to reopen the building on Rozengracht as a club; in 1991 it ceases operations with the Touch Time Festival, mounted in the Leidseplein, in the very heart of Amsterdam’s theatre-land. In 1993 Ritsaert ten Cate establishes DasArts (De Amsterdamse School, Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies), a post-graduate school offering dedicated studio space to young artists and tuition by many of the practitioners associated with Mickery’s history; he is its first director.

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b) A task The flesh… What is it then, this Mickery? A building or number of buildings; a programme or sequence of programmes; a workplace; one man’s biography; a single life’s wish; a shifting vision? For the outside world: a set of rumours, an enigma, a chimera? And are there any distinctions to be made between them, these guises? What can I, as a foreign scholar, contribute to an assessment of its meaning and worth? How can I write a singular, authoritative history of a phenomenon that meant so much to so many? Ominously, the automatic function on my computer repeatedly changes ‘Mickery’ to ‘mockery’. My sole qualification – I was there, at the time, if infrequently, at that particular place. The history of Mickery on Rozengracht mirrors my own professional career, in what we could at the outset, without irony, term ‘experimental’ theatre. In 1973, I performed at Mickery as a member of rat Theatre. In 1989, in the final period of its activities, Mickery produced ­Gododdin, the large-scale, site-specific performance of my company Brith Gof in Leeuwarden in Friesland. Unsurprisingly, in the writing I tend to favour instances of direct contact; predictably, there will be a biographical cast to this narrative. As historian Karl Schlögel states: ‘Whenever we follow a trail of evidence into the past, we are also on the trail of ourselves’ (2005, 9).

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Whilst I am no kind of a theatre historian, I can perhaps offer first-hand experiences and perceptions of a certain period, and of processes of theatre making now almost disappeared. We are – as Wooster Group member Jim Clayburgh remarked to me – the last of a breed: ‘The last who may know how to use memory’. As an outsider, I am not embroiled in old arguments and local disputes. And I am ill-equipped to understand what one conversation partner termed ‘the “Dutchness” of it all’: that unique combination of artistic liberalism, bureaucratic facility and international entrepreneurship, less apparent perhaps since – as another partner stressed – the rise of the centre-right in politics following the parliamentary election of 2002. It’s difficult, too, for me to appreciate the implications for, and impact upon, a regional history of theatre lacking an avant-garde tradition. Or the ways in which Mickery was complemented by the nearby Shaffy Theater (1968–88) in Felix Meritis on Keizersgracht, where under Steve Austen’s direction Dutch artists and companies from Will Spoor to Maatschappij Discordia and Dogtroep were more likely to be presented – though Shaffy’s very presence may have been less evident without the popular and critical profile for alternative theatre growing around Mickery. Or the by-ways of national policies of cultural sponsorship… What I do remember is the impassioned optimism of the late 1960s and a period when Amsterdam was the place to be, to be seen. If then Mickery was of its time, what was that time? My time – mine, and that of those others I will eventually seek out and meet. What more might be said beyond a naked chronology of productions? Something perhaps about the special nature of the relationships built with artists, a respect that enabled them to develop and flourish, and about the unique combination of ‘the artistic’ and ‘the political springing from the cultural’ that transcended conventional party political alignments. Something too about the lack of a broader appreciation of Mickery’s achievements – particularly those of its own productions – largely because they were rarely seen outside Amsterdam. How can I avoid this becoming a biography of Ritsaert ten Cate? He himself warned me against it. And Gary Schwartz’s Ritsaert ten Cate now (1996) – that coincided with the award of the Sphinx Prize to him – already serves the purpose admirably; readers are referred to it. Schwartz’s inclusion of interviews with close associates has informed my own approaches. Ten Cate’s own writings (see Scott 1996) are illuminating on background and motive, and for those encounters and events of personal and professional significance – the last word even, one might suppose. Nevertheless, it is, I’m advised by another correspondent, ‘necessary to see the man’:

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– To recognise the single-mindedness of his endeavour; – To sense his purpose, sustained over 25 years: an individual who became trapped in a professional institution, who became frustrated as relationships with artists turned more business-like; – To demonstrate his preferences. I recall colleagues from Cardiff Laboratory Theatre trying to plead our case in Rozengracht as I sat disconsolately in the van outside, realising the futility; – To extol his foresight – it was he who saw the growing political importance of Europe, even as European partners with new drives and better access to sponsorship were surpassing his own project. Unconcerned, he was already elsewhere, realising new opportunities in education. Where does Mickery’s story reside? – In the physical traces of production: the documentation of conception, negotiation, production and assessment preserved in public archive and on private bookshelf… – In the multitude of individual voices – of artists, administrators and audiences alike – which in concert, conflict and contradiction might illustrate the complex experiences of, and responses to, Mickery’s modes of operation. – In the reviews of Jac Heijer (who died in 1991) and Loek Zonneveld, translated into English for the first time by Welsh poet Paul Evans, that illustrate not only the range of performances presented there but also how, in sensitive and receptive hands, a critical discourse flourishes around the work, legitimises it, makes a place for it in the world. How to go about telling it? c) A method I begin with thoughts on foundational experiences of the discipline in which I was trained. As with many of my contemporary theatre makers in the 1970s, it was not in theatre. i) Analects

It is 11 December 2008 and I’m delivering a guest lecture at the invitation of Professor Maaike Bleeker at the University of Utrecht on my aim to write a history of Mickery. In explaining my intended approach, I reflect on the nature of archaeology. I commence with an action, a story and a photograph…

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An action It’s October 1968 – I begin in Utrecht – and I am an archaeology student in University College, Cardiff. We are on a first-year course in artefact con-

servation. We are each given a red, earthenware flowerpot by the lecturer – I hold up a flowerpot – that we insert into a brown paper bag – I place it in a bag. He then smashes it with a hammer – I break it. And perhaps I should finish there; all that remains of this action will be some potshards and your memories…

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He then puts his hand into each bag, removes several pieces and throws them into the rubbish bin – I do likewise. Over the following academic term, we were invited – in the lecturer’s own words – to reconstruct ­the pot. We were, I surmise, working with analogy, trying to create something similar to those things we’d seen before, knew to exist from other times and places – flower pots. Otherwise, we might have made a ceramic chicken or an abstract sculpture, or assumed that individual pieces were crude knives or triangular nose-guards – I demonstrate options. Without the base and its drainage hole, we might have fashioned a drinking bowl. The process took several weeks: sticking the pieces together correctly, filling in the gaps with white plaster of Paris, then painting them red – a red not too closely matched, to show the extent of my own handiwork, as if there were any doubt. What he didn’t reveal was that flowerpots are pressure-moulded; break them and the molecules are released cataclysmically, chaotically. This was never going to work; the final edges would never meet. Our efforts would always be confounded; reconstruction is impossible, an empty notion. And then in Utrecht, I tip the contents of the rubbish bin onto the table. Old coffee cups, used tissues, discarded lecture notes, plastic bottles and fragments of flowerpot spill out, mixed together. What he didn’t tell us is, that it’s these pieces that usually survive. And then I pick up the hammer: Or more likely just this: something that bears – to misquote Michel Foucault from the introduction to The Order of Things – no trace of having ‘just broken the flowerpot’. What can we ever tell from the hammer? A series of crude metaphors for my Mickery project: about piecing together the past; and differentials of survival; and the perils of over-enthusiastic interpretation. A small performance of theory.

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A story Same period, same place... We are on a first-year course entitled ‘History, Principles and Methods’. In an inaugural session, our professor makes a proposal. At that time, the department in Cardiff possessed many rare and valuable books on archaeology – antiquarian volumes such as Camden’s Britannia, first published in 1573. Most were leather-bound folio editions, with small blocks of printed text at the centre of a large white page. Given the growing popular interest in archaeology and as there were now so many of us – fifteen in my year – he informed us that there was desperate need for more space in the department. So there was a plan to split the books, cut off the white from the pages and then rebind them as smaller volumes. ‘Is that alright?’ he asked provocatively, ‘After all, it’s only empty space.’ We quickly learned about context – the conditions in which something is placed, and from which it derives meaning; about ethical responsibilities; and about the deformations that may already have occurred in the things that come to us from the past. At the time, we had little else theoretically to go on. Only the ‘law of superposition’ – the deeper one goes the older it gets; and the ‘ladder of inference’ – from an artefact one can infer a lot about technology (how it was made), far less about belief (its symbolic status, what function it played in original cognitive systems). More crude metaphors...

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A photograph It is 12 January 1973 and rat Theatre is performing Blindfold in Cardiff. This photograph is one of only 72 existing images of the production. The programme of the World Theatre Festival in Nancy would say of us in May that year: ‘It is “Poor Theatre” and “Theatre of Cruelty” taken to their furthest extremes.’ [...] ‘Few could like them, legitimately, lay claim to Artaud, at least with regard to the manifesto on cruelty.’ Referenced here, to provide context for festival-goers, is the ‘poor theatre’ of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski whose Theatre Laboratorium had astonished audiences in Western Europe when it first appeared in 1968; and the writings of French visionary Antonin Artaud, at that time an influence not only on alternative theatre but also mainstream practices – in 1964, Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz staged the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ season with the Royal Shakespeare Company. But this was idiosyncratic, aggressive, disturbing, preposterous, ugly stuff – form and content locked in one semi-coherent outburst of violent energy. We were proto-punks, fuelled by a set of attitudes to the body physical and to the body politic, our mouths full of Situationist slogans – ‘What are you against?’ ‘What have

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rat Theatre, Blindfold, 1973

you got?’ If we’d been able to play guitars, we would have formed a band; instead, we made physical theatre. It was our only option: arrogance, bad attitude, disrespect for theatre tradition, and confrontation with audiences – theatre as traffic accident. In Nancy, a man from Amsterdam seems to appreciate what we are doing in theatre – and in the name of libertarian politics – and invites us to his place. In December 1973, we appear at Mickery. Coda In the discussion that follows the lecture in Utrecht, individuals recount the haziest memories of events in Loenersloot. Some are turned almost fabulous – ‘They had fish, big fish, hitting each other’; ‘...holding up sticks, red sticks, white sticks, to determine the ending’; ‘There was a large poster in a field’… ii) Archaeology

It’s difficult to recollect a time before video. A world that we were not simultaneously recording: for future reference; for posterity; as anticipatory aide-memoire. To keep hold of the present, as something to do whilst

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26

present. Now, we have an abiding urge to document ourselves constantly; any public event generates multiple replicas of itself. Simply hold up your mobile telephone. It’s difficult, too, to recall a time before digital technology and its pervasive domestic adoption: now, we can access Internet information on every stage in the manufacture of the flowerpot; we can even reassemble it on screen, virtually. But in 1973 why would we want to document, even if we had the equipment? What for, when alternative theatre professed and asserted its liveness in performance – its very existence predicated upon the co-presence and direct interaction of performer and spectator, in an instance of ‘here and now’? For publicity maybe, but even then better to remain guarded about what we looked like, what we intended to do. Yet both intentionally and accidentally, any process of production generates debris and detritus, irrepressibly. From the theatre of that period, these are the kinds of things that survive – a few slides, the odd photographic contact sheet, fragments of audio tape, scribbled drawings on slips of paper, indecipherable notes, diaries, reviews, injuries, scars, halfremembered experiences, faint recollections. Metaphorically at least, archaeology does appear useful in helping us appreciate these remains. But the material record is always and invariably fragmentary and partial. Given the unpredictability of long-term archaeological formational processes – with various modes of documentation being lost or decaying over different timescales, as paper wears, metal staples rust, photographs fade, tapes stretch, memory malfunctions and the equipment on which to play obsolete formats disappears – it is hubris to believe otherwise. There is, however, more. Conventionally, we think of archaeology as something to do with digging up the past. We have a romantic notion of the dusty archaeologist, delving, burrowing and discovering priceless artefacts. Although excavation is an essential recovery procedure, it is not, in and of itself, the discipline. We can better regard archaeology as a practice set in the present, that works on, and with, the traces of the past. What archaeologists do is to work with evidence in order to create something – a meaning or narrative or story – that stands for the past in the present. Rather than being a reconstruction of the past from its remains, this is a reconstitution. Archaeology, then, is the relation we maintain with the past; it consists of a work of mediation with the past. It is contemporary interest that sends us to the past; we produce the past in the present. It was long felt that the past somehow speaks to us – as if every artefact were a purposeful message to us – and that all we have to do is listen and decipher in order to understand. But archaeological knowledge has to be produced, and interpretation is always informed by present interests,

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needs, desires and values, be they personal, political or academic. The past ‘as it was’ or ‘as it happened’ is an illusion, not something stable, something homogeneous; and there is no possibility of a final and definite account of things. In this sense, archaeology is something that each of us routinely does: this we could call ‘the archaeological imagination’. In consequence, the past may become a place of contemporary contention – of conflicting interpretations, of power struggles over ownership, of claim and counter-claim. About what this or that really meant; about the intentions and beliefs of this or that individual, at that time... In thinking and writing archaeologically about devised performance, and about its sites of exposition such as Mickery, we should acknowledge the importance of process – there is always more to be said and done; pluralism – there are always different ways of describing and representing the same event; indefinite series – one event (performance) generates further practices (documentation) that inform this book that inspires new research and so on...; absence and uncertainty – the space between materials, documents and narratives generates insight. Archaeology is about interpretation, about work being done in the gaps, about making an intelligent assessment of happenings that were never that certain or sure in the first place! Traces and relics are drawn together in a creative project in the present and not as a speculation on original meaning or intention, since that very meaning was already indistinct and multiple. In proposing an archaeology of theatre these questions arise: – What remains and why? And what went where? What to the archive, what to the personal library, what to the rubbish dump? – What is lost, and how might this shortfall be addressed? – What is remembered and why? Are memories primarily those of when the performance went well, or are they of all those doubts, conflicts and traumas of the production period, or of accidents, mishaps and failures – the time when the set fell over – during presentation? Is it ever possible to remember extended passages of performance – to remember durations of activity sequentially in real time – or does recollection of an event inevitably collapse into a few resonant images? – And is there a tension between the official version of events – preserved in perpetuity in the archive – and the remembrance of flashes of euphoria and uneasy experiences by those present at the time? In the cuttings library, press reviews endure tenaciously as, we assume, evidence from reliable witnesses. To assert the equal veracity of scraps of experience retained in those who were present, and the flotsam and jetsam of performance is the task of theatre archaeology. 27

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iii) Oral history

Performance endures not only as material remains, but also in the recollections of its practitioners, and of its witnesses. Sometimes these former exist as detailed testimony and elaborated narrative: more often as anecdotes – proudly aggrandising, exaggerating, romanticising occurrences of biographical or artistic significance or impact. Occasionally they are transformed into aphorisms or analects: instances of expert observation and knowledge worked into parables of performance, and transmitted in the essentially oral culture of theatre making. And these we should encourage, these travellers’ tales from places few academic commentators are likely to visit, or standpoints they are likely to assume. In theatre scholarship, we concentrate too much on the analysis of performance from positions of spectatorship; and on constructing authoritative, external and frequently attenuated versions of ‘what actually happened’ – causing us to be rational and reasonable about work that was none of these things at the time. There is too little focus on performance as a contingent mesh of experiences: on feelings of ‘fight or flight’; on histories written on and in the body; on accounts that might discomfort the past – secret histories; tall tales; personal revelations; stories of awkwardness, pain, trauma, scarring… Now that we have practitioners with longevity – 20 years, 40 years – in alternative theatre, we can begin to examine, with them, the repercussions of the longue durée of their protracted involvement. How, for instance, do echoes of past performances inflect and rebound in their current work? How does the personal bodywork – or plain survival tactics – of one performance get carried forward into another? How is the work of one company manifest in another, as performers shift their allegiance? This examination will require close critical attention to procedures of genealogy and historiography; it will entail enquiring into details of life history, group culture, and individual and collective oeuvres; into bad practice – accident, chance, ‘pushing your luck’, banal ‘makings do’, the low points; into drunken nights and improprieties; into effluent and murky discharge rather than the usual concerns of scholarly enquiry – author, genre, period – or the manicured life stories of hagiography. This process explores a history of practices and ‘ways of going on’ that were transmitted face-to-face and mouth-to-mouth then; these have become voices and reminiscences, in chorus and cacophony, in quiet reflection and apparent contradiction, now. ‘He was political; he wasn’t political. He was very Dutch, he wasn’t Dutch at all.’ 28

iv) All that remains…

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A wooden model, a book of pictures, a performance programme, a scientific report, a neon sign, a chair, a video, a photocopy, an obituary… The reminiscences of former staff, visiting directors and performers, audience members… The published articles and books of reviewers, critics, academic researchers… These are the remains of Mickery. My approach will be part archaeology, part oral history, part memoir… My basic strategy is to choose a number of ‘things’ to represent Mickery, both archival documents and physical objects: to describe them and to use them as an entrée into discussion of broader aspects of its history; and to undertake a series of conversations with key individuals who have perceptions of particular periods in its history An assemblage of physical remains and memories; a concatenation of images and reflections, of documentary accounts and personal revelations – purposefully preserved, casually called to mind – that stands in for Mickery, in its absence. It is an imperfect archaeology: imperfect because my method is not rigorous. I speak no Dutch. So as I haunt the Mickery archive at the Netherlands Theatre Institute, I am drawn inexorably to companies and productions that I witnessed – this document or that photograph acting as a mnemonic, awakening experiences, a source of pleasure in the present. And a source of regret too, as I recognise the faces of those already departed. Imperfect too: in my understanding of fragments themselves. Some I identify immediately. With others I need help to discern their significance, largely from those who were there then. And others – Dutch pieces in the main – to continue my analogy, I admit: ‘I don’t even know which way up they are, let alone where they fit.’ And an imperfect oral history: I drift from one conversation to another with no formal understanding of interview technique – taking what I am told at face value, listening to tales coloured by nostalgia and hindsight and filtered through present perceptions. Trying to catch the sub-texts, the innuendoes and the counter-narratives: to pay proper attention to what individuals say. Rather than including the conversations verbatim, I write an account of each encounter. I realise that, often, the same events are referenced. I decide to leave in any repetitions and reiterations, for these may truly constitute ‘just the high points’ of Mickery’s history.

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A Mickery chair, 2010

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After writing, I send the texts to my conversation partners for review, approval and correction: to edit and clarify; to elaborate further; and to remove any indiscreet comments, what upon reflection appears imprudent or over-inflated. One well-known director withdraws permission to publish, citing displeasure with the format and content of the account of our conversation. Is it something that was said, something revealing that undermines a closely policed history; or simply the standard of my writing, and my failure to relate our conversation appropriately? What to do: to make some sanctimonious critical comment by leaving several pages blank in this volume, or by writing a further speculation on likely reasons for the failure of the original? Better perhaps to leave the absence as unmarked, as a further imperfection, as a lacuna in the manuscript to be filled by supposition and conjecture. Archival research, oral history and field observation are then com-

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bined. There is no claim to completeness: fragments of differing types are assembled to create a partial picture, a glimpse of creative aspirations. The project is as much about method as Mickery. It resembles a meandering journey, in a land dimly familiar. Or a personal quest – a search in which everyone I meet recommends someone else who might supply a missing viewpoint, or offers tantalising hints of other material that might orientate me – a manuscript that Sijbolt Noorda possesses on the first years of Mickery; the metres-high audience research documents of Professor Henri Schoenmakers; the revealing letters to scholar Don Rubin, founding editor of Canadian Theatre Review; the designs in his sketchbook for unrealised productions. Mickery remains a Grail, always slightly beyond my reach. The more I read and visit and listen, the more the story of Mickery becomes a palimpsest, a page written over, written around and written through but from which the central text – the text that Ritsaert ten Cate might have provided – is already indistinct or erased. My account is ramshackle, provisional, built from the information available to me at the time. My hope – given what on re-reading appears to be a long apologia – is that it will enhance wider appreciation of the historical, cultural and aesthetic significance of Mickery. And evoke a period of fervent creativity in theatre. And recover, reassess and activate some of the artistic gains made. And celebrate an energy and intelligence that might just inspire a new generation of practitioners. And stimulate further initiatives... My question (and hope): Is all that was once possible still possible, albeit in altered forms? And I hope too that this small beginning will inspire both scholars and practitioners to enquire further: into the archives of Mickery in the Netherlands Theatre Institute; into material dispersed by Ritsaert ten Cate to places where it might prove most stimulating – to the puppet company Hotel Modern in Rotterdam, to Peergroup in Veenhuizen. Into all that remains… The title I decide upon is Mickery Theater. An Imperfect Archaeology. Arthur Sonnen calls it ‘a detective movie with only circumstantial evidence’. Regard this, then, as a prologue to further work. And only one reconstitution of the material – yours may well be other. My one regret is that my tone may appear too elegiac – unavoidable in looking back to a period when we had, in British director Albert Hunt’s words, ‘hopes for great happenings’. Written from a perspective few of us ever thought we’d achieve. In Pete Townsend’s words in The Who’s My Generation – ‘Hope I die before I get old’.

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d) Structure This is a volume in two distinct sections. In the first section, conversations and descriptions alternate. Throughout, photographs and line drawings are included to illustrate productions mentioned and to help reveal the workings of Mickery itself, though few visual documents exist of its interior architecture, the scenic layout of productions or its audience. The ordering of material is largely chronological, though the trajectory will often enter wormholes in time, with the same stories reappearing; or, thinking geologically, stories becoming folded and faulted, brought into unexpected juxtapositions. With the general reader in mind, I have avoided excessive citation; quotations, in general, refer directly to the publications under consideration in each short chapter. In this, it is informed by the recent work of anthropologists Daniel Miller (The Comfort of Things 2008) and Kathleen Stewart (Ordinary Affects 2007), who try to capture and express the affects of their encounters with material and with others. I have avoided including a comprehensive gazetteer of companies, productions and dates. For some readers – those, in the main, who were there at the time – the names and images I include will occasion instant recognition, serving as a prompt for experiences past. For others, having a computer and search engine close at hand may be desirable. Some companies and individuals are even now just two clicks away on the Internet – Needcompany, Mabou Mines, The Wooster Group. Others remain indistinct – phantom presences: to recover them is where the further research begins. Despite the title – included to make my subject matter explicit in library catalogues and on bookshelves – I refer throughout to ‘Mickery’ without further qualification, though others use ‘the Mickery’ and ‘the Mickery Theater’. Mickery was the single word on the neon sign. And for conciseness, I call Ritsaert ten Cate ‘RtC’, the style he adopted in his own correspondence. I never knew him, as did others, by the familiar Rits. The second section includes 42 reviews of productions staged at or by Mickery and other critical texts by Jac Heijer, arranged from 1970 to 1989 and refer in the main to the productions I reference as well. It concludes with 13 reviews and thought-pieces by Loek Zonneveld that cover the final peripatetic period of Mickery’s existence with descriptions of the work of John Jesurun, Ping Chong and Fiona Templeton, as well as Needcompany’s Julius Caesar and Mickery’s own final production Hess Is Dead.

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Ritsaert ten Cate, Loenersloot Mickery Gallery, 1966

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1 Ritsaert ten Cate (In his own words – founder/artistic director, Mickery, 1965–91; founder/ artistic director DasArts, 1965–2000) December 2007, Amsterdam It is a shaky start. I am casual in my attention to note taking and recording. I assume that our conversations will go on, and that over the months he will guide and direct me in writing the history of Mickery – his concept, his place, his achievement. I do not realise how ill he is, how fleeting our contact will be. It is on a visit with Arthur Sonnen to Touch Time, RtC’s studio and gallery that we meet for the first time in a long time. Also present is Erica Bilder, who is helping to sort and catalogue his collection. He is reticent and potters in the background, searching for this or that, as Erica explains her connection with Mickery, expressing opinions on its significance within his earshot that he neither interrupts nor contradicts. She had been given tremendous responsibilities for her age, multitasking in contemporary parlance. But not too young to realise how RtC had an ability to skirt existing rules – of funding, production and presentation – through a combination of personality and class, and the support of a board of influential individuals. And how he developed a corporate approach, diverse in its discourses – business-like in relation to sponsors, pre-emptive in producing official reports, attentive to audiences in offering an extended programme of performances, with associated talks and

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films. ‘Everything was possible in the Mickery’, she concludes. He searches for one of the books of photocopies of photographs that he gave to the performers in preparation for work on his production Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985). He finds the model of Tenjo Sajiki’s Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun (1978), a folding wooden box with a handle that opens like some archaic board game. ‘Oh my God, is it really?’ she exclaims. And together, as they arrange and push around the blocks that represent the hovercraft units and their audiences – pointing and speculating, figuring out what went where – they remember and summon up Mickery. Finally he expresses an opinion. ‘It was an accident in time. We started something we didn’t know anything about, didn’t know the rules of what was to be done.’ From my notes, I see someone then says, ‘My house is Mickery’. It could have been anyone present. 19 March 2008, Amsterdam Our second meeting is on ‘Woonboot Diogenes’, the canal houseboat he shares with his wife Colleen Scott; I do not think to bring a tape recorder. He is visibly weaker. In my notes, perhaps as a result of my shorthand or his lack of energy, he appears terse and epigrammatic – ‘Mickery was an attitude not a space. The work always came first.’ He remembers Loenersloot: half the audience in evening dress crying during Nina Simone’s performance; the important synergy that came from the presence of gallery and theatre. And Rozengracht too: challenging the complacency of audiences by constantly shifting the point of orientation, both physically and thematically; creating new forms of dramaturgy in the ‘Making theatre beyond television’ experiments. With hindsight, he reflects – ‘It was a day-to-day dealing with a different culture.’ But he makes no overall assessments, no grand claims, no neat conclusions. I tell him of my plan to interview others. ‘Trust no-one’, he responds, helpfully. 17 December 2008, Amsterdam Later, after his passing on 5 September 2008, I meet Colleen again on the houseboat, to collect the large book of birds he has left me. His absence is profound. And she is candid: about herself – ‘He chose me because I’m not Dutch’; about relationships with certain colleagues and artists to whom I might speak that were now broken and had turned bitter – ‘They invalidate themselves’; about the obstinacy and tenacity in his booking policy – ‘He kept bringing them even though audiences didn’t like the work’; and above all about his seriousness of intent – ‘Ritsaert was not playing tiddlywinks!’

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2 In the attic It begins for me in the attic, with a battered green suitcase. In unsteady torchlight, I open it. And here are the surviving scraps of youthful ambition, all that I once considered important, thought worth keeping: undergraduate essays; archaeology textbooks; the programmes of student drama festivals; notes on Erving Goffman and R.D. Laing borrowed from a friend and never returned; a ticket for a benefit concert for Chapter Arts Centre featuring Pink Floyd; the first embarrassing attempt at writing a book – in multi-coloured felt-tip pens! All that remains of the years 1968– 73 – random, jumbled, unstratified… And here too a sheaf of yellowing typed A4 sheets. The cover reads: rat Theatre, The Mickery Reviews, December 4th – December 23rd, 1973. Amsterdam. The first page is headed ‘Ritsaert ten Cate’s Justification’. He writes:

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RAT Theatre, Newcastle, is a completely new and unexpected star in the English ‘Fringe’ firmament. The group’s first performances, about a year ago in the annual n.u.s. Drama Festival sponsored by The Sunday Times, placed it immediately on the list of groups to be reckoned with.

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Instead of perfectly rehearsed shadow-fights, the phenomenon of a group who literally attacked each other with sticks and clubs, had never been seen before, and was received with mixed feelings. The opponents used the old argument that you cannot do things like that on stage, that it is’nt [sic] theatre (where have we heard that before). Supporters had trouble placing the new phenomenon and most had to be satisfied with the admission that they did not know what it was all about, but that it had made a great impression. What was more indicative for the international fringe was that the group was immediately placed on the menu for the Nancy Festival, went on to the festival in Palermo, played in Rome, Belgrade and Ljubljana and toured throughout England. The ‘cruel, sado-masochists’ turned out, in the meantime, to be perfectly gentle, friendly, merry people – even though they were sometimes suddenly covered in plasters – who take their work very seriously and work peacefully together […]. In Wroclaw we came across the most threatening figure of the whole group, the blond bully from blindfold. He had left the group for a time to do some theatre with the children from his neighbourhood. (He will be playing his character again when they come to Mickery).

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RtC had seen us at the World Theatre in Nancy in May 1973, in the early years of a liaison in which he would consult with Monique Lang every year several months before the festival, to identify what work might pass through or transfer to Mickery. In Nancy we scandalised; he invited us to Amsterdam. There we are – young, confident, uncompromising. And there I am – that ‘blond bully’ – persuaded by RtC to return, though I needed little persuasion: to perform at Mickery was already both aspiration and accolade

rat Theatre, Hunchback, 1973

Mickery originally planned that the group should play blindfold for a week, which forced rat to phone us to tell us that, as we should have known, six performances of blindfold, one after the other, was physically impossible. Yet another demonstration of how quickly, once over the first shock, you accept a new phenomenon and slot it in as a show that must be seen, without stopping to think of what, for this group, is an obvious practical aspect. Whether rat’s acting method can or should lead to a new form of theatre is debatable; what is certain is that the work-method they are exploring is completely new: and a lot must happen if this is still to be possible in Mickery.

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for my generation of theatre-makers. What strikes me is how many of the attitudes of Mickery are contained in this single document: that RtC writes a ‘justification’ – taking care – clear in a responsibility to nurture a critical framework for, and popular understanding of, emerging practices, fostering a context for work, a way of seeing, attending closely to audience and press alike. That he is guarded in his opinions – I’m not sure he liked our rough-hewn physical style but he appreciated our seriousness. That he is fully aware of the English scene. That he is ‘doing the rounds’ of the festival circuit, meeting me in November in Wroclaw. And then in the document there are translations of the reviews, RtC equally mindful of a responsibility to support the practitioners, taking care. From Het Parool –‘Those who want to keep abreast of new development must not miss rat Theatre’; from NRC Handelsblad; and from Jac Heijer in Haarlems Dagblad – ‘A completely different experience from the play you just sit and look at; aesthetic pleasure, enjoyment but also insight gained through intelligent reasoning.’ In November 2006 we meet in Aberystwyth for a rat Theatre reunion. A colleague, greyer but still vital, brings two fragile ‘Gestetnered’ sheets: a map and an itinerary of the subsequent ‘Mickery–Circuit Tour of Judas’ – Amfitheater th-Twente in Enschede, Theater de Lantaren in Rotterdam, Minitheater in Dordrecht, Casimir in Amstelveen. And somewhat worryingly – ‘Means of Transport: Mickery-van.’ Mickery is already an importer and promoter, evangelical in spreading the message more widely. And he brings too rat Theatre’s subsequent publicity brochures, peppered with quotes from the Dutch press – even Twentsche Courant’s ‘a wretched experience’ is included. The Mickery engagement is crucial to enhancing our status in Britain, helping to secure further work and funding through a reputation – albeit gilded and embroidered – won abroad. rat, as with other groups, begins to refer to itself as ‘international’. I bring a three-minute film of rat Theatre in Nancy discovered in the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel’ (ina) archive in Paris. Here is what RtC saw, but which those semi-naked figures – in their blindfolds – never could. Now, men in their late fifties look at themselves – in motion, in colour – finally appreciating something of the effect they had. And at the bottom of the suitcase is a single black-and-white photograph taken in May 1975: of Jac Heijer leaning against a car – RtC’s sports car – in the main square in Nancy. RtC had persuaded a group of Dutch critics to accompany him to the festival, nurturing the critical discourse – taking care.

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(Independent coach/consultant; deputy director Mickery, 1970–5) Conversation: 13 May 2009, Amsterdam Report: Workshop One, April 1971 At Loenersloot, his first two tasks were ‘to clean up the mess and to clean out the youth hostel’. To identify, to reassemble, to rearrange and to discard discretely the pieces of art that had accumulated around the farm, in a process that took many weeks and included much misunderstanding. And to evict workshop members who were still in residence months after the event – ‘Nobody is doing anything. Free food and drink. It’s a bit too much.’ And RtC? ‘He was not able to send them away.’ Workshop One, the first in a planned series of ‘experimental theatre projects’, had commenced in November 1970. Over three months, the chosen participants would be provided with ‘civilised living conditions, a certain amount of money to sustain us and the opportunity to a) develop new techniques in connection with our work in the theatre […and] b) to work from the beginning on a piece that could ultimately be realised in performance’. The proposal was to create a ‘screenplay’ – a term coined significantly from media production – for Pandora informed by sessions with

Mickery Loenersloot exterior, mid-1960s

3 Otto Romijn

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companies that visited on a fortnightly rotation: Moving Being, Portable Theatre, Els Joglars. The final report, that includes personal diaries and individual evaluations, describes increasing squabbles and disaffections. The tension was caused by two irreconcilables. That between ‘the creation of two interwoven communities – a domestic community and a working community’. And the uneasiness between long-standing staff and presumptuous incomers who note – ‘a sense of threat of theirs becoming ours, of Mickery changing, evolving into something living rather than a shell’. There were problems from the outset. Work was initially confined to the bar/foyer area ‘with cushions from the theatre seats as mats’, and to daytime because of the on-going theatre programme. Physical preparation began to take up half the day, revealing the paradox of placing the accent on ‘self-exploration and self-discovery’ in a planned context of collective creativity. Without leadership, it became difficult to find ‘concrete, tangible forms and shapes and structures’. Most telling is a shortfall in method and approach. The exercises noted are the familiars of the period – theatre games; Grotowski’s ‘Cat’; breathing ‘as the source of all movement and basic stimulus for action’; activities eliciting ‘organic intuitive impulses and responses’… But the stated proposal is for a confrontation with media and communication hardware, television, radio, sound, projection – ‘We can learn how to cope with media, how to understand media, how to implement media, how to utilise media, how to discard media and how to evolve new media.’ In an unrealised exercise titled Pandora Realtime, blindfolded participants are to be transported to a mediatised environment and there – unmasked – asked to improvise within a pre-arranged array of cameras, monitors, projectors and audio speakers. Involving four video cameras, four 16mm film projectors and four-channel sound, this is a portent of future theatre practices and concerns at Mickery, though it is difficult to know whether Pandora Realtime was only ever a concept or a practical reality. On Saturday, 6 February 1971, the first and only performance of Pandora was presented for an invited audience. But the ‘mayhem’ continued, in a local manifestation of that phase when alternative theatre and alternative lifestyle fused and ‘free’ expression expected ‘free’ accommodation. I don’t think anyone intentionally wanted to use the Mickery as a hostel or home for strays – but gradually more and more guests kept arriving, more and more space was occupied.

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So he cleared them out – ‘That was not a very popular job.’ He brought an air of professionalism, of pragmatic realism, to an important phase of

change and reorganisation at Mickery. But he would never become a member of the small core group that for him resembled a family, in a family home – ‘They could not live without each other.’ He would plan the move to Amsterdam. And as he had a suit, he could ‘dress to impress’ the city bureaucrats. At Loenersloot the audience also resembled a family – drawn from local wealthy inhabitants, originally from Amsterdam but now living in rural surroundings – in which everyone knew each other. Mickery was chic and highbrow – ‘It was a place for the rich and great.’ Even so: ‘It sometimes happened that there were more people on the stage.’ Ritsaert knew how fashionable, sophisticated, Mickery in Loonersloot was. That was one of the reasons he liked a change. What he missed was the connection with the theatre schools and artistic theatre world in Amsterdam. His idea was to be the theatre for everybody; in those times, there was that feeling [about]… So a date was set to move to Amsterdam. RtC insisted: ‘We start on that date; doesn’t matter where.’ The makeshift solution was to open at the Noorderkerk, then under renovation. He recalls:

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The acoustics were terrible. It was very, very cold – we started in winter. There was nothing. It must have cost a fortune. We put lights in. We put everything in – huge heaters, generators. It was quite a circus. Eventually installed in the converted cinema on Rozengracht, the flexibility of the ‘black box’ auditorium they constructed meant it was as if they could ‘buy for every group a new theatre.’ Such a singular environment – complete with knowledgeable technical crew and increasingly knowledgeable audience – surely came as a surprise to companies familiar with coping with the limited facilities and eccentricities of university refectories and of those studios annexed to main stages that constituted their touring circuit, in Britain for instance. For Dutch audiences, it was an almost unique opportunity to see imported work – ‘London was the place where it happened. Mickery symbolised that.’ On Rozengracht they erected a canopy to connect the theatre with the street, to signal a different attitude to theatre presentation – ‘Everybody can come in.’ And in the programming they chose ‘not very verbal plays’, performances with music to attract new audiences – ‘I liked Pip Simmons.’ He now appreciates the work achieved with the public, though at the

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time he quickly learned not to sit in the first three rows! His favourite performance was Joint Stock’s adaptation of Heathcote Williams’s The Speakers (1974) in which the audience shifted between performers mounted on soapboxes in emulation of Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, a functioning tea-bar standing at the centre of the theatre. I myself saw The Speakers sited awkwardly on the main stage of the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, my attention constantly wandering to the darkened peripheries as I peered into the ‘wings’. At Mickery, it occupied the unitary space that lacked either substantial offstage or backstage without any distraction – ‘That was the real moment, the way it was done; a play about meeting people.’ Performance, performers, audience – all in plain view...

4 In the archive i

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Location: Netherlands Theatre Institute (tin), Herengracht 168, Amsterdam

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The inventory has been intimidating: a complete record, in Dutch, of the deposit of the ‘Stichting Mickery Workshop 1965–1991’. Fifty-five pages of lists of correspondence alone: to and from a ‘who’s who’ of alternative theatre. I decide to go with what I can recognise, the names of well-known artists and companies listed under ‘Produkties: Uitgevoerd’. I sit in the library overlooking the canal, snow in the air: in front of me a row of brown boxes and a pair of scissors. Each box bears a barcode and the label ‘Hulshoff Archiefbeheer’. I select ‘Mickery 1178–1180’ and cut the black plastic strip. Inside are four bundles of documents, each wrapped in grey paper and bound with a brown and cream herringbone cord: the record of Mickery production Sweet Dreams (1982). I untie the cords… I am astonished. They have kept everything. Here are the ground plan (Design: R. ten Cate); lighting plot; technical requirements (‘fish tank holds 6–12 medium carp and one carp is killed and cleaned for each performance’); programmes; Polaroids; budgets; schedules; industrial catalogues; business letters; telexes; contacts; workbooks; cast photographs; scribbled ideas; full scripts; production notes. I proceed carefully, concerned that there may be meaning in the stratigraphy. Is the ordering of material in each bundle chronological? Enough here to appreciate the care and labour of practices often marginal to theatre historiography; to re-imagine the performance, to restage it even, given the time and the will. What has perished, of course, is the world in which it had meaning. After that, I open packages in a kind of frenzy, seeking out the famous, and those I know: stern letters concerning The Wooster Group; petrol re-

ceipts from Pip Simmons, and ‘cut-and-paste’ scripts that show how the structures of productions were gradually assembled over time; candid notes from RtC to notable artists – ‘I think it stinks’ – and rebuffs for unreasonable demands; tough contracts with Tenjo Sajiki; and Terayama’s drawings of the ‘human milking machine’ for Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/ Nuhikun (1978), with rehearsal timetables and lists of rules and traffic maps for those who will move the audiences in their boxes. Evidence of day-to-day working: pragmatically generated; conscientiously kept; institutionally stored. Inevitably, I go looking for myself. Packets 1270 and 1271 are labelled ‘Gododdin yn Fryslan’ (1989). I am shocked. It’s mainly budgets. I gasp at

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The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, Superman, 1970

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the costs. Here clearly is the shift from the makeshift idealism of the 1970s to the business of the late 1980s and the profound and fateful change in Mickery’s operation – in both discourse and in dealing with artists – in that short period when theatre miraculously attained super-heated value. On a second visit, I am again drawn to the familiar – John Jesurun, Needcompany, Squat Theatre… And to the British companies who came in a rush in 1969–70 in what seems to constitute a ‘tipping point’ in Mickery’s programme: – The People Show – ‘Do not approach the People Show as a piece of drama, but as a kaleidoscopic pattern of images, or a work of kinetic sculpture’; – The Pip Simmons Theatre Group – with Superman (1970) dedicated to President Nixon and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: ‘Whose efforts to recapture the early 50s do not pass unnoticed!’; – The Freehold Company – ‘The actor’s total instrument (his body, his mind, his voice) is the starting point for all the work’. In press releases and publicity, they make claims without yet quite knowing whom they are addressing, in what kind of voice, and to what end. Packet 1169 contains material on Fairground (1975) – flaking, crumbling, at risk of disintegrating in my hands. No one has demanded that I wear cotton gloves; that this material is as yet that valuable. In a preliminary scenario, scenes are listed in columns against a timeline down the left – ‘Box C, Scene: Autumn, Action: Shake box softly, Tape: storm (1’), Action: switch fake break-down electroswitch’ [?]. But this is over-written in different hands, in different inks, as the performance is gradually brought into focus. A later version lists what happens, where, and when, and shows the choreography of the audience hovercraft boxes. Time becomes as significant as story as an organising principle, and a new role is imagined for the audience – ‘I beg you, just to give one hour of your life and let us play with it’. Packet 1171 is dedicated solely to Fairground ’84 (1984) – ‘A presentation structure which utilizes 3 auditoria, each holding an audience of (roughly) 65. Imagine these as Boxes. Airfilters are attached to the bottom of each Box; through the use of compressed air, it is possible to move the Boxes freely through the larger space. Think, therefore, of 3 theatres; or of 3 theatre performances manifested simultaneously in the same space.’ The stated aim is to stimulate new theatre writing and to capitalise on past experiments. Fairground ’84 is located historically: the presentation of discrete ‘mini-plays’ created by three British venues – Chapter, ICA, Traverse – harks back to early collaborations with the Traverse Theatre Club. The technology is proven, developed in Fairground and Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun.

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And the formal engagement of the audience continues – ‘a stimulating counter-action’ to the blunting of personal faculties under threat from media overload. They are once again put to work, called upon ‘to share the responsibility for “the origin of what is new”’. Only through dialogue with each other in the bar afterwards will they appreciate the complexity of dramatic material experienced from different viewpoints. In an unprovenanced essay included in Packet 1172, entitled MICKERY 1965–1984, Joost Sternheim, editor of Toneel Teatraal, assesses the dramaturgical achievements to date of Mickery: 1. The emancipation of the actor – The actor himself: his body, his personality, his own biography, the actor with his own abilities became the decisive constituent element of the show. 2. The combination and integration of various arts (and artists!) into one theatre performance 3. The exploration of space, the architecture of a theatre production – Space in three senses: the space of the theatre as a building – the auditorium with all the other rooms forming part of the theatre. Secondly, the space outside the building, by which I do not simply refer to the adjacent street, but to street life and life in general: on the one hand, the rules, standards and form of our life in public, on the other hand, the rituals behind the closed doors of the public road (this is the source of Mickery’s long-standing interest in a medium like television). Finally, the space within the production itself, by which I mean the way in which each element of a production – text, acting, ‘gesture’, setting, etc – reflects an awareness of its physical and spiritual environment. It is no accident that we no longer talk of ‘the setting’, but of ‘the stage design’ – the former acts as background, enclosure, the latter refers to a special interpretation, to the visualised breathing of the theatrical space. 4. New presentation structures – New presentational structures involve the emancipation of the reception of the production, rather than the audience as such. This means that the audience is not primarily tackled about its awareness of, for example, injustice in the world, but about its awareness of attending a performance in a theatre. By deranging, changing and manipulating this awareness, one can broaden the rules of both theatre making and theatre going. This means that the way in which theatre makers and audiences relate to the theatre and the relationship between makers and audiences are turned into the subject matter of the production. See Fairground. From the revolutionary modular seating system at Loenersloot to the theatre-sized boxes of today, the chief aim is the deconditioning and

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Mickery Rozengracht, interior, mid-1970s

activation of our awareness of the reality of the theatre, of the impact theatre may have on us. This section is compiled from three files on my laptop computer; I find that I still have twenty-two unopened. They are a reminder of the extensive work yet to be done on the Mickery material; and that once one starts digging, the bottom is always likely to be a very long way down. Archive fever!

5 Frans de la Haye (Industrial designer; designer of the Mickery modules and the Fairground boxes and a number of productions) Conversation: 14 May 2009, Amsterdam

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At Loenersloot, a simple wooden platform or a couple of worn rugs sufficed to mark off the performer’s space from the audience, who in some cases surrounded the ‘stage’ on all sides. At the Mickery, one was evidently in the same room with the ac-

tors – whom one met in the bar after the performance. This sense of complicity, of entering into a conspiracy with the people on stage, must have constituted one of the main attractions of going to the Mickery in those early days. (Mickery Pictorial I 1988, ix) ‘It was very informal’, he recalls of the barn. ‘There were four columns supporting the roof, it was a symmetrical roof. There was an open space; the people were already seated around a playground, a stage, on chairs and on ledges.’ But the move to Rozengracht presented a new challenge: how to organise and position the audience in a large room; and how to preserve intimacy. I had little to do with theatre; I didn’t see theatre, not this fringe theatre. I thought theatre was always on stage. It became clear to me right away that it wouldn’t be the traditional theatre they needed there. I thought if I were an actor I would like to move the people where I wanted them basically. That was the basic thought. As an industrial designer – ‘young, ignorant, highly motivated’ – he approached it as a practical brief. He explains:

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You look at the lines of sight in different configurations. From that you derive a certain matrix of dimensions: the space between seats not too far apart; people should be relatively close, touching basically, because that creates also another effect in the audience. And also it should be possible to remove the whole thing and store it somewhere very compactly. As usual there was little money – ‘There was never money.’ And even though he was offered considerable freedom – ‘I didn’t want to touch that beautiful empty space.’ His solution was the ‘Mickery module’, a folding plywood box with hinges at the corners and a removable top, economic and portable, constructed to the dimensions of ‘off-the-shelf’ materials. Before the move, they had made a prototype at Loenersloot and thrown it around the theatre. It proved strong and reliable, though RtC dropped one on his foot and had to be taken to hospital. The basic shape was to be a square, but this was eventually doubled to make a rectangle 1.83 metres x 91 centimetres with a height of 30 centimetres including the lid. The resulting folding rostra were painted black, with circular holes cut in the sides: for ease of handling; for feeding scaffolding tubes to build bridges; to affix steps for access. And these holes could also serve a number of purposes – attaching railings, passing cables

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for lighting. The corner hinges protruded, facilitating the building of different heights and combinations as they slotted into the box below. For the seats he used an existing plastic shell on a newly designed frame that enabled units of three chairs to be pressed together under tension and then pushed down into specially drilled square holes, preventing movement and ensuring rigidity. The system was ergonomically efficient and ‘It looked great’. It would become a standard feature of studio theatres worldwide, a practical and durable solution to the question of flexibility – ‘It was meant for these experimental spaces where you want to have total control of where your audience is. Is it seated? Is it standing? It was quite versatile.’ The audience could then be arranged anew for each production. And this was the option that was offered to visiting companies, who also began to include the modules in their performances as staging units. Whilst few photographs exist of audiences, we occasionally glimpse modules in use as temporary platforms for performance. Its one drawback? ‘It was a manual, laborious thing to build the stage. But it was doable, if you are not exceeding 200 seats!’ His approach is, he admits, Dutch Calvinist, favouring functionality, durability and cost-efficiency. But the Fairground project posed an entirely new set of questions. And RtC’s proposal?

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We have a concept of this play where we move the people in boxes, twenty-five in a box, split them up, put them in front of plays, different small plays. We create a total disorientation and also make people realise basically that following the order of things is very important.

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He appreciated immediately that simply putting wheels on the boxes and pushing them around would not work. The combined weight of audience and box would be two tons – ‘You will probably go through the floor.’ His solution was to enable the boxes to float on air – not as in a hovercraft where the noise would be terrific, certainly too loud for theatre, and the amount of downdraught required prohibitive – but on a film of compressed air across the space: ‘We can have everything floating around. You can push it with one finger, one person; doesn’t need more force to move it.’ The prototype was a contraption made from tyre inner tubes cut in half ‘like a doughnut’ and glued to a board. But it worked. It was a self-regulating system: air escaping through holes beneath the boxes met the resistance of air on the floor – ‘It was very beautiful.’ The one essential was to seal the floor, covering the whole area in thin boards to prevent air escaping noisily, and potentially catastrophically, through cracks and at the

joints between the timber boards. Occasionally cubes had ‘orchestrated’ technical problems and evacuating audiences had to remove their shoes so as not to damage the delicate surface, tip-toeing out – ‘They didn’t know they were so close together.’

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That was theatre. I was in it and you lost totally every sense of time and space. You thought there was a huge space, moving around. In an untitled photograph, the immobile boxes stand in the space. In a second, RtC sits lost in thought, on one of the seating frames, as if contemplating how this can ever function. Images in Mickery Pictorial I (1988) show audiences huddled closely together in their illuminated boxes (116; 118). Outside, groups of unseen workers use poles and rods to organise the complexity of pipework and cabling (115; 117). Closed by curtains during the times of movement, boxes opened onto scenes both comic and more serious in intent. Sometimes audiences faced each other with the dramatic action located between them, their varying responses apparent in each other’s sightlines – ‘And then you saw your partner sitting there; it was full, the effect of theatre was so rich because of the interaction between people.’ At the end, the four boxes were arranged in a row facing a single cello player who was lit from above. The significant repercussion was to throw audiences into conversation after the event: who had seen what, in what order; what did they understand of what had happened? What might be gleaned to inform interpretation through discussion? ‘Most interesting were the talks afterwards between people. They all saw the same in different orders.’ It would, he reflects, have made a good commercial prospect; it really was like a fairground. But they were already on to the next idea… With limited equipment, with little money, but with increasing technical skill and adaptability, Mickery staff developed the techniques to relocate and repeatedly engage their audience within three-dimensional re-imaginings of an architecture of fixed dimensions. He concludes: Basically you want to be able to manipulate everything. It’s a space of experiment in human relations, in society; but also with space, visibility, light... For him, it begins then with a box and darkness – ‘That’s all you need, because light is space; you can always make it light again.’ At Mickery nothing was pre-determined – ‘It forces you to think.’ In sum, he learned to make theatre at Mickery; it was ‘a fantastic playground’.

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6 In the archive ii Location: Netherlands Theatre Institute (tin), Herengracht 168, Amsterdam

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My notes read: ‘7 October 2008 – It’s all here!’ Six months after my first visit, I sit at my desk reviewing my computer files, remembering the kind of reverie I entered in the Netherlands Theatre Institute as I encountered the fragments of past performances – half-remembered, already forgotten, known only by repute and rumour. The reminders to myself are in capitals: ‘QUESTION OF PRIVACY’ I am surprised again by the personal nature of correspondence to and from RtC that is embarrassing, revelatory, gossipy, cajoling, hustling – ‘I want to do this at the Mickery, and I’m open to everything you can think of’; ‘COMES INTO FOCUS’ How, in the plethora of preserved material, one observes projects gradually come into being, both artistically and financially; ‘EXTRAORDINARY DETAIL’ How much about a production is revealed in the ancillary documents: of construction, transportation, accommodation – ‘I do plan to build a “metal” table in Amsterdam and plan on getting the materials there’ (Jim Clayburgh, Wooster Group, Routes 1 and 9); ‘POSTDRAMATIC – THEATRE ABOUT THEATRE’ And how, in a series of its own productions and through advocacy of emerging practitioners in the 1980s, a new set of practices transpires. Concerning the impact of Mickery, the artists themselves are revealing. Commencing with The Unnamed (1975), Theatre X becomes a regular visitor. In 1976, its actors participate in Mickery production Folter Follies. In the ‘Theatre X Manifesto’ (4 January 1981) John Schneider writes: This production gave us courage to attempt things in our own work we might otherwise have shied away from, such as the use of multi-media, and large-scale staging techniques. It raised questions about audience-performer relationships, and about the use of the ‘real world’ in a theatre piece, that we have still not answered. Of RtC’s counsel to stage An Interest in Strangers (1979) as a series of improvisatory ‘encounters’ with the audience in the foyer, he is nevertheless frank – ‘In reality, we couldn’t do it.’

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It is a very good idea for the Mickery to challenge a group by inviting it to create work which it otherwise would not or could not create. It is probably not a very good idea to attempt in any way to adjust the working process of that group for the project.

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Ritsaert’s structuring of the time and process was well thought out and very helpful; and his frequent presence at and comments on the rehearsals themselves were extremely helpful. The Mickery really is a sort of international theatre laboratory, a hub, a meeting-place for the exchange of ideas. It does not only bring in groups from many countries, it influences them. Whatever it is and however it works, it is NOT a simple producing house. It is more primary and generative than that. It initiates, as well as facilitates. It explores and synthesises.

Mickery, Folter Follies, 1976

Nevertheless, he is appreciative of ‘the finest technical staff I have encountered’.

The actors of Theatre X become close collaborators; perhaps their American practice is already located somewhere between stage and screen. In anticipation of the company’s Scenarios for the Living/for the Dead (1983), RtC notes that it will combine theatrical presentation and television registration: There would be two (theatre) versions. One for the people immediately ‘experiencing’ the performance/recording version (being

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part of the television version), another group of public experiencing the show through all (video) material offered, i.e. monitors linked to respective cameras, the space wired for sound, but no ‘life’ information [sic].

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We then get three versions: a. the play about the media, with media as an integrated presence of the performance, b. the material – through the media – but as yet uncensored, unmanipulated if you wish, and c. the version in which a choice of information has been made (leaving out all other aspects that could have been chosen). Mickery here playing a key role in conceptualisation: a company’s corpus of work regularly attended to. Soon after, Mickery is instrumental in cultivating a new wave of Dutch/Flemish theatre. In my notes: ‘NOTHING I UNDERSTAND’ Work I regard as international, was of course, initially negotiated regionally – in Dutch. ‘VISIONARY, UTOPIAN’ In preparation for Need to Know (1987) by Needcompany, Jan Lauwers writes an open letter to participants: Content: ‘Confusion as content’; ‘A fresco of emotions.’ The first element: the actors The second element is the film. Kidnap. We cut the film in unequal parts, in keeping with the dramatic tension. The film will be shown on a number of monitors and is handled by the actors. We do not intend to show the whole film The third element is the music: One of the main questions, using the music, will be: when does the music render an image false? The fourth element is the scenery The fifth element is theatre as redefining itself. The content always is two-fold: on the one hand the question about the function of theatre and its analysis of it, on the other hand the real content, starting out from the film. We show notions like crying/laughing as definitions themselves, without any story-telling. We ask ourselves what impersonation means in the theatre and we try to be genuine. What does ‘acting on the edge of one’s self’ mean when one works with a script.

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Mickery opens a door to this new wave, but too late in the day perhaps to ride it fully. By the late 1980s, it is an office: an organisation as much in the

import/export business. It’s documentation, that might be assessed by weight or thickness as much as by content, includes letters to sponsors promising introductions to the Queen, budgets, technical riders, progress reports. Of Peter Sellars’s Ajax (1987) for the American National Theatre:

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January 28, 1987 According to Keri we need 10 gallons of stage blood for one show which is then mixed with enough water to make 20 gallons of liquid. We can recycle this mixture if we carry along with us on tour two or three 10-gallon containers to store the blood in for travelling. Also, to facilitate the removal of the blood from the bloodbox, we’re going to need a small pump – without a pump it will have to be siphoned off through a tube by mouth, something that will add to the get out time. Feb 1, 1987 Casting in Europe – Child should be 11 or 12 years old, but look around 8 – Child should look vulnerable and innocent; Keri says that the child they had in Washington was perfect: curly blond hair and big blue eyes…although it isn’t absolutely necessary that the child’s colouring be that. – Child must be light-weight and short, because in one scene Ajax tosses him up and catches him in his arms, also because his ‘mother’ is only 5 feet tall. – By the way, in case this hasn’t been mentioned previous to this, the child must be a boy. – Of course the child has to be able to sit still, pay attention, and concentrate. – The child has no lines – There are two scenes for the child, and each scene is about 10 minutes long. And RtC remains ever true – ‘They hated it in Washington.’ Regardless, he stages the work. I feel dizzy, at risk of drowning in detail; and in a certain sadness. For here too are the documents of those who never made it to Mickery, proclaiming their own worth; companies such as Les Treteaux Libres, naked as ever, absent from most historical accounts, who were the inspiration for rat Theatre… 53

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Concept Theatre, Fairground, 1975 – boxes

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7 Peter Schreiber (Managing director, Mickery 1973–7) Conversation: 17 December, 2008, Amsterdam It was like a dream – ‘You don’t say no to Mickery.’ But it was never going to work, the plan to separate business from programming. After the move to Amsterdam, RtC wanted to concentrate on art – presenting theatre, making theatre – to withdraw fully from the day-to-day management and to put the organisation of Mickery into other professional hands. But that was barely possible in such a personalised institution – ‘RtC was Mickery, Mickery was RtC.’ Only RtC ever appreciated what was feasible and what not. In seeing the work he wanted, in issuing an invitation at some festival elsewhere, he was already doing an equation, later agreed upon in contracts. Companies and individuals came to Mickery because of RtC and accepted to work on the basis of British Equity minimum rates (plus hotel including breakfast and travel) because of the particular opportunity it offered, the esteem that accrued. Following relocation to Rozengracht, the board nevertheless demanded some sort of order in running the everyday affairs. And although as general manager he lasted three and a half years, they were constantly in each other’s way, he and the production manager and the Mickery ‘family’ – ‘The core of the staff being there from day one was dedicated, creative and 100% loyal only to him.’ The most remarkable person in the staff was the legendary Mr Jepkes,

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Mickery’s accountant, who had worked at Siemens – ‘The only person in Mickery in its whole history who was and remained Mr Jepkes, and this in an organisation where first names were the usual way of addressing each other. Even Ritsaert addressed him in the formal way; for Mr Jepkes he was Mr ten Cate.’ But he wants there to be no misunderstanding: Mr Jepkes was fully integrated and respected by both staff and visiting artists. From a small office off the hallway, Mr Jepkes would produce budget after budget, financial report after report, assessing the risks, reining in indulgence, but more often than not approving expenditure – ‘He satisfied Ritsaert’s feeling for documentation and giving transparency. Ritsaert was someone who wanted openness and who wanted to justify, to show responsibility for what he had done.’ ‘Mr Jepkes made sure that Mickery’s administration was perfect. A situation highly appreciated by the subsidising public authorities.’ This need to explain was also apparent in the printed programmes that accompanied every production – simple, typed, hand-produced white sheets that included RtC’s justification on the back page, generally written on the afternoon of the first night. He justified every programme and he stood in the lobby at the bar during the performances; he didn’t look nervous. But he was always insecure – whether that performance would make it, whether people would see the quality he had, whether it would come across… If people didn’t see it, didn’t understand, he was furious; he argued, even with journalists. A good relation with the press was essential. The high pace of programming – every second week a new show, sometimes two shows parallel with a third one touring – demanded frequent presence from critics who generally also had to follow the broad score of the Dutch theatre offerings. They came. And not only those from what is called ‘the quality papers’, also the critic of De Telegraaf showed up frequently. The publication of reviews in the evening papers the day after a first night and the following morning had their direct impact on reservation calls at the box-office – positively and negatively. But it never resulted in a change in programming – there were no ‘extra’ performances because of great success, no programmed series cut short. Mickery worked with a strict graphic house style, developed by one of the country’s leading design offices. The letterhead and consequently the first page had ‘Mickery’ in square letters; the familiar logo in RtC’s own handwriting came later. Although there was little money for reproduction, the

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quality of the graphic design, the standardisation of layout, demonstrated the seriousness of intent. Mickery’s mail, publicity cards, press releases could be recognised even when the name did not appear. RtC looked after quality in every aspect of his work. But at the same time he was priceconscious and practical. That sensitivity and appreciation of economic realities was also apparent in the construction of the ‘Mickery modules’. Based on existing dimensions for industrial wood panels, there was no waste – ‘The best possible result, under the conditions available.’ He reflects: You could rebuild the Mickery in half a day with two people and no machine. Every group had a free choice – ‘Here is the space, how would you like to have it?’

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The second advantage was that the system could be used with or without chairs; each tier was higher than a normal step. So if a production was going well, the chairs were removed and more audience crushed in – ‘You had one-third more capacity because two chairs are at least three people’ – requiring a constant to-ing and fro-ing to the box office – ‘Can I have another ten?’ By 1974, there were already tensions around Mickery’s function and operation. Whilst acknowledging the theatre’s status, government funders were adamant that it should stay with its core business, producing and presenting foreign companies.

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Mickery should refrain from producing its own shows; that was the central message of the National Arts Council advising the Government on funding. The discussion took place at the time that RtC worked on his first genuine theatre project – a show around the subject of manipulation. Fairground became a product of Concept Theatre of Boston, an entirely fictitious company with a fictitious, though apparently world-renowned, director which RtC seemed to have programmed like all the other productions presented at the Mickery. It was Jac Heijer and André Rutten who warned against pushing the deception too far, against staging a press conference with the famous director of the show arriving at Schiphol Airport – ‘Because people will be cheated and you cheat them in a way they will not forgive you. They can

be cheated in the production, you can do whatever you want because that is part of the subject for the show.’ Even though they knew better, they too kept up the pretence in their reviews. Fairground was ‘Mickery at its best’, and it took a lot of nerve – ‘It was technically over the edge of the Mickery, because there was a staff of [just] three people.’ The production required sound and projection at various levels and, live performance. Plus three hovercraft-driven, containerlike constructions as separate auditoriums for the audience of somewhere around a total of 60. The floor in the theatre leaked like an old roof. It had to be clean and airtight and without obstacles – ‘The hovercraft cannot overcome the height of one screw; it stops.’

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These boxes had to be moved by hand. Two generators stood in front of the theatre; you had to have low noise generators because of the neighbours. There were these huge pipes and hoses entering the building through the toilets upstairs, down over the balcony each into one of the boxes. Then you had to choreograph that these hoses would not mix up. So the routing of these boxes had to follow a strict choreography. From above, it was like watching a silent ballet. And on the night when one of the air cushions collapsed, technicians heroically lifted and moved the unit by hand. In an article in De Groene Amsterdammer on 16 April 1975 titled ‘Concept Theatre doesn’t exist. Mickery manipulates the public and press alike’, Nic Brink examines the sophisticated ruse: that it was conceived as a direct challenge to funders who regarded Mickery solely as a venue for presenting international work. Only thus, in the guise of American director Leonard Grehm, did RtC establish his own credentials as a director. The creation of the ‘Mickery circuit’ was, he considers, as much for financial reasons as it was missionary. By touring visiting companies to provincial venues, the theatre made money – ‘We balance the income budget and run the Mickery thanks to this.’ At that time even though touring was a requirement for all Dutch subsidised theatre, it was not common for theatres in the provinces to programme alternative work. RtC gained the confidence of a group of theatre directors who relied on his artistic

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judgement and took performances on his recommendation. They would come to premières in Amsterdam: They wanted to see what they had booked. They could say ‘no’, one week before, but hardly ever did. This group of theatre directors and programmers who supported us was also an important argument to justify the national subsidy. Theatres all over the country hosted the touring productions on a regular basis; ‘Mickery circuit’ became a brand name in itself. And sometimes enthusiasm transcended financial sense. In 1975, Mickery presented US puppeteer Robert Anton – ‘the smallest show on earth’ – in RtC’s office, in the shed in the backyard, the audience of twelve gathering on stools from the bar around the tiny figures on Anton’s fingers. This show also was offered for the circuit – against the normal fee, but with the same restriction as to the number of audience allowed. It was booked by the director of the theatre in Emmen – ‘I will invite personally my most dear customers.’ The show was supposed to be given in his modern and spacious office. But Anton had a different idea. And the director followed him – the audience assembled on a small spot in the centre of the main stage, with the darkened space of the auditorium behind. It was the most magic thing in theatre.

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So, the circuit also ‘spread the word’. ‘Ritsaert wanted the theatre to be known’; he was an ‘educator’ – ‘In everything he did all his life.’ And he was an artist. When he left Mickery and DasArts – i.e. the theatre – it was no surprise that he turned to the arts. A circle was closed: Mickery in Loenersloot had started as an art gallery. RtC was very proud of gaining recognition as an artist in his own rights, even though his link with theatre makers all over the world remained intact, his advice valuable and widely wanted. Was he a great theatre maker? ‘I’m not sure.’ But he stimulated a whole generation of other theatre makers – ‘Built up those who had lost faith in themselves. And he also had an audience for them. Ritsaert was giving them courage, but only when he was convinced that there was a talent to be discovered and developed.’ He was open to failure.

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Not without reason so many groups came back and came back and had a home at the Mickery. They didn’t come for the money!’

Location: Rozentheater, Amsterdam

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It is 8 October 2008 and we are standing between Dijkman Muziekinstrumenten and Supermarkt Roos outside 117 Rozengracht – Otto, Arthur and I. On the façade, beneath the balcony, there are carvings of four ruffed clowns; below them sit four bearded figures crushed into decorated frames, their fists pressed to their ears. The gold lettering reads ROZEN THEATER. This is the Jugendstil exterior of 117 Rozengracht. We are expectant, excited even. We have not been here for some time. The first photograph – on a Powerpoint presentation that the current theatre director subsequently gives me – shows a sepia image of Rozengracht around 1890, a canal down the centre, with commercial barges, wheelbarrows and Westerkerk indistinct in the background. In a second photograph, children sit on the steps of three canal houses as a man in a bowler hat passes. But the houses are beginning to lean toward each other and sink in the sandy soil. An outline sketch for a new building appears digitally, superimposed on the houses; shortly they will be demolished –

Capitol Cinema cinema, original interior

8 A building

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destruction of such dwellings surely an unthinkable proposition today – to make way for the new Rozen Theater cinema that, with 1,000 seats, will be the biggest in the Netherlands. The cinema opens officially in 1913. Interior shots show a balcony and sloping stalls facing a small, inset box stage, with an illuminated sign for toilets to the left. It also functions as a variety theatre: in 1917, Martha de Geus stars as ‘Roosje of Rozengracht’ in the review Weet’k veel. By 1931, it has changed its name to the Asta Theater, showing the films of Harold Lloyd, already somewhat anachronistic, but doubtless appealing in their silent comedy to the Dutch audience. An aerial photograph of the building, renamed Capitol Cinema in 1953, gives an impression of its size; for an inner-city building in Amsterdam, it is large. What then to do with it, as television begins to supplant the collective experience of cinema-going, and audiences decline? In 1970 there are municipal plans costing two million guilders for its refurbishment as a theatre. In preliminary designs by the architectural office P. Zaanen, the front is clad in glass and new materials. But there is a cheaper proposal, an idea distinctly of its time. Otto Romijn found the building. As a ‘man with a suit’ he carried out the negotiations; this, the city fathers decided, was someone they could deal with. The conversion was extensive. The cinema was gutted, the floor was levelled and the balcony bricked in and transformed into the separate 50-seat Bovenzaal, to and from which there would always be a problem of noise spillage. And the interior was painted black, or rather a nondescript brown. Without either fixed seating or permanent staging, the main hall represented an early, and subsequently influential, example of a ‘black box’ studio, an ostensibly flexible space that became a ubiquitous feature of new theatre construction during the period. The black box became the quintessential ‘empty space’, the form that responded best to the complex of aesthetic demands made by [theatre director Peter] Brook in 1967/8. It purported to be a neutral environment, allowing any desired configuration of seating. Its walls being invisible, lighting could make the space seem as tiny or expansive as the director might desire. (Wiles 2003, 254). An academic aside

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Theatre historian David Wiles (2003) is one of the few commentators to describe and examine the nature of the black box, certainly as anything other than an anonymous scene of representation – ‘There is nothing neu-

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tral about blackness’ (254). For him the black box cuts itself off from ‘an implicitly corrupt and false social world outside, and attempts to obliterate all social signals from its interior’ (257), ‘isolating it from other social practices’ (258). It thus constitutes a closed environment that encourages abstraction and in which aestheticism flourishes, ruling out styles such as the familiar naturalism of the conventional auditorium – ‘for any stage set framed by a black wall is revealed to be mere stage artifice’ (ibid.). It represents ‘a depoliticizing space in the sense that no body politic can be placed on view, whatever the overt political content of works performed’ (257). Wiles regards the associated appeal to flexibility as an expression of libertarian and, somewhat paradoxically given his assertion above, democratic ideology – ‘for there is a theoretical freedom of choice here to adopt any mode of organizing the theatrical microcosm’ (ibid.). Concomitantly, he supposes that it is in the dark that spectators are constructed as individuals, allowing them to retain their personal privacy. Far from being a neutral space – black frequently characterised as a device for obviating light spillage – we can regard the black box rather as the apogee of the enlightenment project in theatre, with the individual performer/character – the human subject – cut out of social context, his or her motives and actions in plain view. For Wiles, it is a ‘historically specific architectural statement’ (255). His comments are tinged with hindsight, his critique largely proceeding from a contemporary situation in which such studios ‘have become a piece of historical baggage that contemporary practice must struggle to accommodate’ (ibid.): they remain the sine qua non of university British drama departments with any pretence at teaching theatre practice. He does concede that ‘The black box is a locational, textured and dimensional place that purports to be merely homogeneous space’ (259). Any one example is marked by specific local traditions of use, and littered with the signs of a certain history. Although there may be a sustained effort to maintain the studio as unchanging – reinforcing its putative a-temporal nature – the floor often reveals the traces of regular re-painting. And through regular visitation, audiences become familiar with the detailed character of their place: its acoustic, its setting, its ambience and character. The black box seems suited for the practical endorsement of Peter Brook’s influential axiom: ‘I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage’ (Brook 1972, 11). But in his reflection on the multiple ‘ghostings’ of theatre, Marvin Carlson challenges Brook’s use of the term ‘empty’ as implying a ‘phenomenological ground-zero’ (Carlson 2001, 133). The space of theatre is always haunted both by the cultural memories it deals with and

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the summoning of previous experiences by those present – ‘the audience memories of the previous work of those theatre artists are reinforced by the fact that much or all of that previous work was experienced in the same physical surroundings’ (143). As a converted cinema, Mickery was never the featureless, rectangular annex of a newly built theatre, a paradigm for a ‘nowhere in particular’ that comes to represent a ‘somewhere’. And the refurbishment never totally obscured its origins. But it did take its place in an emerging circuit of similar venues that both facilitated and necessitated the development of styles of portable, metonymic theatre: performances of limited scenographic means that could be rapidly assembled, installed and dismantled, whilst leaving the venue relatively unmarked. Here, performers are in close proximity: they turn and address the audience directly from the darkness. The accent is initially upon actorly skill and the direct engagement of the audience, though often in unfamiliar tones and registers. And upon altered ways of viewing... The vacant room becomes the locale for theatre making rather than the empty stage, a room in which memories linger and new experiences await. A room without the appendages of the auditorium – with neither ‘tower’ for flying scenery, nor ‘wings’ for entrances and exists. A place where little can be hidden: where actors are frequently on stage and in full view for the duration. A place that requires new ‘ways of going on’ and within which, new approaches to staging and performing appear.

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We enter. And for an hour, we struggle to orientate ourselves in a building that was altered yet again in 2004–2005. There is much pointing, positioning, turning, demonstrating, outlining, circling, pacing and pondering. We try to remember a place now gone, with and through the body, walking into the past. In the backyard, there are now houses; the wooden cabins – ‘We were stored there’ retorts Otto – are long gone. Backstage, we are lost, searching for RtC’s office – ‘More or less, it was here’; ‘It wasn’t here at all’; ‘It must have been here.’ The original balcony has been replaced. In the foyer, the long-serving technical director describes former features, their dimensions and surfaces – ‘You came this way.’ This is a work of imagination, as we locate this and that, seeing ourselves then. What moments, meetings, performances, do we project like phantasms of the mind’s eye onto these unfamiliar surroundings? What distant voices echo? The stained glass showing red roses and Indonesian figures once hidden in the toilet is now revealed – ‘You were peeing here and looking there.’ And in the relocated men’s facilities, we find two of the original cinema urinals, reclaimed, preserved and bearing the inscription ‘Robbert Kalff & Co’.

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Capitol Cinema, entrance

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Amazingly, in the alcove, in the recess created by the removal of the original box-stage, are the ‘Mickery modules’, still in use – ‘Flexibility is hated by those who have to do it’ someone comments. ‘Unwieldy bastards’, Rob Klinkenberg later calls them, ‘especially when you had to store them under the floor.’ On site, this unexpected encounter with the past leads to an appreciation of the utility of this resource. First, of the potential to repeatedly re-orientate performance and audience, and arrangements of action and viewpoint; of beginning creativity with the empty space rather than the empty stage and what this might mean for processes of production and presentation. Of that which became a commonplace of alternative theatre in the 1970s but which have their origins in locations like Mickery, in the practical problems of dealing with a space with neither front nor back. Secondly, how the architecture of the cinema haunted Mickery. Not only how the bricked-in balcony would become a second small space – the Bovenzaal – but how, later, with the partition removed, it would – with remains of the old box stage now known as the ‘Alkoof’ – provide one of the three adjoining but discrete spaces within which separate audiences were located in productions such as Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985). Here the architecture itself begins to enable the overlaying and interpenetration of material and its perception that become familiars of postdramatic theatre, and of digital media. And thirdly, how with the bar in the foyer, the artists had to come forward to meet their audience, even accidentally, whilst exiting. The final images on the Powerpoint are of recent rebuilding work. In the stark light of industrial illumination, the machinery resembles a Survival Research Laboratories performance from the late 1980s. As the interior is stripped, poignant traces are revealed amongst the rubble – posters for companies and productions of the early 1970s, for stu from Cracow, for Pip Simmons’s Do It! There is a cleansing here, the erasing and shrouding of the detail in our contemporary preoccupation with newness, with resistant surfaces and environmental hygiene. And yet, however faintly, the building enshrines its previous occupations: on 23 December 2004, the distinctive curved ceiling of the cinema is apparent, though now painted purple. In the Amsterdam City Archives, I find no architect’s plans. The conversion in 1971 was too recent for official deposition, they tell me. But there are four photographs of Mickery from that initial period. I peruse them closely, like David Hemmings in Antonioni’s film Blow Up. What do I expect to see? In the first, the magnetic letters of the cinema hoarding announce La MaMa’s Medea and Pip Simmons’s George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show; it is soon after the move – 1972. With an eye turned forensic, I realise two images are shot on the same day – 11 July 1977 – and that in a

passing car, there seems to be no one at the wheel. Later, Marijke Hoogenboom sends me a picture of Otto Romijn, in a sports jacket, assembling rostra. But they have large circular holes – this surely is at Loenersloot. And a series of photographs of a maquette of a barn at Loenersloot, by artist Paul Thek. The model of the derelict, roofless building contains two tiny battered upright pianos; in the photographs, it stands on a plinth – in the derelict barn between two battered upright pianos. I assume it is Mickery before conversion, but the timing is wrong. This is not the barn. The model itself is preserved in DasArts. Do others now take it for Mickery, as I automatically did?

9 Max Arian (Freelance publicist on theatre, opera and the Middle East; former editor, De Groene Amsterdammer) Conversation: 16 December 2008, Amsterdam

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I was at the time editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, responsible for cultural affairs and something like a theatre critic, more interviewing than reviewing. In this way I visited Mickery very often, perhaps would not often miss a show, even when I did not understand too much of it. We were participating in and discussing what happened in Mickery, the readers of De Groene were, because of that, more interested in Mickery than those of other journals. The talk is of politics and criticism and the nature of memory – ‘I love thinking about Ritsaert and the Mickery’, he says. Not as nostalgia for times past or regret for opportunities lost, but as a constant source of inspiration – ‘Let’s not forget about Mickery.’ But in teaching our students we agree – ‘We should never tell them it’s already been done.’ He outlines the political situation that paralleled Mickery’s emergence, though its original dinner-suited patrons would barely have acknowledged it. A radical student movement came into being early in the Netherlands, in 1963. In 1965–6, the prankster Provos had already injected fun and imagination into protest activities; 1968, he thinks, was relatively unimportant here. Whilst artists in other media where beginning to question conservative attitudes and institutional structures, it was not until late in 1969 that students from the theatre schools began ‘Actie Tomaat’ (‘Tomato Action’), throwing fruit at actors on stage in productions of the large state-subsidised companies. But even late in the day of international youthful rebellion, the effect was profound. Established companies

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The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, Do It!, 1971

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quickly folded and new groups, new initiatives appeared, amongst which a rejuvenated Mickery, with its extended programme, was only one. Politically engaged theatre, youth theatre, improvised theatre were particularly strong in provincial cities, though there were perhaps, he reflects, limitations in an adherence to dogma – there were only so many times young workers would want to see their own condition on stage. Exposure to the work at Mickery might have informed creative practices and critical optics, he muses. He visited Loenersloot only twice, and it was there that he saw Pip Simmons’s work for the first time – Do It! (1971). In a contemporary photograph

he sits with his wife – ‘You can see we didn’t understand what was happening around us; it was totally new.’ ‘I did understand it was about politics – the Yippies.’ But there was more. The form itself was politicised, as if Simmons was asking himself, self-critically – ‘What am I really doing?’ For paradoxically, he was emulating the very modes of commercial production and sequestered presentation critiqued by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and their followers. Of all the productions he saw, he retains impressions of Pip Simmons’s best: the actor buried up to his neck in the backyard and looking down on the party of decadent people in the large hall in The Masque of the Red Death (1977). Simmons’s influence – in his attitude to space and to audience ­– has, he thinks, been lasting, though largely unacknowledged and often by hearsay or historical osmosis, as young, contemporary practitioners in the Netherlands once again favour extreme styles of expression and the relocation of audiences:

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You had to participate yourself, sometimes as a kind of victim of what happened. Sometimes you just didn’t understand very well, or you would think, ‘What is he doing now?’ So pretentious… he wants to make politics himself… he wants to make the theatre so different…something simple – like the audience would be moved. With Pip Simmons, you have to go for yourself: to think ‘what is he doing, what is he criticising, where do I stand?’ It’s a new way of looking at things. Simmons’s work was abrasive and confrontational, without being polemical. Often, there were no easy answers, as in Towards a Nuclear Future (1979), when the implications of both possible options presented in concert – ‘You had to find your own place there.’ Even in An die Musik (1975) – presented by the renamed Children of the Night (after the company became resident in Rotterdam and following Dracula (1974)) – which ended with the naked concentration camp orchestra enveloped in smoke, Simmons never explicitly fore-grounded his own Jewishness or that of several of his actors. The effect was in the sheer theatricality, without restraint: in the integration of text and music, in the demands on audience. Do It! (1971), too, climaxed with the theatre full of smoke, and the wail of sirens emulating the tear gas and confusion of demonstrations at the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968. In Cardiff, we staggered out of the university studio theatre, coughing, blinded. Of this, he has no recollection – ‘It was something so special. But it’s difficult to catch it in your head and that’s theatre, and this kind of theatre more than the oth-

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ers.’ Memory then as a return to events filed as single images, and to ambiances; to the tenor of the times; to reawakened feelings of excitement… The productions at Mickery helped change audience perceptions. There was, he postulates, a new tradition of Dutch theatre-making that made audiences work – ‘To fill in the gaps yourself, to have imagination, to interpret…’ Its audience was never a clique; it was a self-selecting ‘adventurous elite’. What Mickery fostered was the realisation: ‘They don’t have to tell everything on the stage.’ Such work required new critical approaches, though some reviewers either rarely came near or walked out. ‘This experience-like theatre…it’s very difficult to catch it, difficult to write about it. It has to be very personal, or you must try to be objective… Jac [Heijer] is wrestling with this problem.’ And in a small theatre scene, this could be difficult. In 1982, eight Dutch directors were invited to present their interpretation of the last scene of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the Bovenzaal at Mickery. He remembers one version in which the audience watched themselves in a large mirror behind the actors. Secure in its status, this was both a challenge by Mickery to the artistic community, and an attempt at reconciliation. A central conceit of the Afraid of project was to involve critics directly:

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Something happened there that never could have happened, never would happen. You would never have to compare eight directors; you would never have critics go home, write about it immediately and then come back in the evening and read it. At that time we never had a possibility of any theatre person to respond to the critics. He himself dared to be disapproving of an important director and in return was criticised by a figure of the theatre establishment. Other theatre people subsequently shunned him – ‘They were dead to me.’ And this perhaps revealed the ambiguities of Mickery: always ‘half in’ and ‘half out’ of Dutch theatre in the practices and aesthetics it championed, in the ways of seeing it nurtured. Always admirable at a distance, a potential threat close up. He ends with a litany of more individuals to talk to, those who might enlighten further parts of the picture. And of further tantalising fragments to seek out – his own interview with RtC in 1974. But here I think in him is the true spirit of the Sixties – radical, enquiring, resilient – the attitudes that supported Mickery, and that Mickery in turn informed. 68

André Rutten. 1973. ‘Mickery.’ Delta: A Review of Arts Life and Thought in the Netherlands 16(2): 92–108.

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It is 8 December 1965. The weather is foul. The opening is at midnight, the audience select – ‘theatre people, television bigwigs, and their shoulderrubbing hangers-on’ (98). The cameras are there to film the crowd but as soon as their lights are switched off, the premiere turns chilly; the heating in the converted barn breaks down. Johnny Speight’s If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them has already been filmed; in the photograph, two bulky cameras on wheeled dollies point at two actors who stand talking, face to face (95). The room is low, the ceiling pitched, the theatre lamps attached to the beams barely above head height. Even the cameraman wears a suit. In the image below – titled ‘The Loenersloot staff at work’ – RtC sits on a ladder whilst a large dog slumps on the small raised dais where Nina Simone will perform and which will become the only identifying marker of this place in the closeup photographs of productions to come.

Mickery Loenersloot interior, mid-1960s

10 A journal article

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So begins the endeavour at Loenersloot – ‘less a village than a dot on the map between Amsterdam and Utrecht’ (92) – an initiative born of a double dissatisfaction: with a career in commercial film and television production, and with a repertory system mired in convention. The barn is both an opportunity for and a challenge to the Dutch theatre profession. But the public perception is of exclusivity, of a venue only accessible by car, of high admission prices and – with its associated art gallery and specialist publisher – of pretensions beyond its station. And actors will only follow the money; once the television subsidy disappears, once RtC’s own financial circumstances are compromised, Mickery slips into the red – ‘After that, the Dutch actors were not heard from again for the time being’ (93). And then… in an implausible happenstance, RtC becomes aware of a new scene, of groups of young performers primarily in the USA and Britain, producing simple, low-budget and provocative production, ideally suited to the working conditions at Mickery – an aspirational, aesthetic and economic fit. Early, La MaMa comes as a revelation, creating ‘a much more personal, engrossing type of theatrical experience than had ever been witnessed before in the Netherlands’ (96). ‘So that is how it all began’ (ibid.). In this article – in a small, well-produced journal with a cover design redolent of the optical illusions of M.C. Escher – André Rutten reviews the first eight years, noting and perhaps embellishing points of origin and developments that become foundational myths of Mickery’s history. But were RtC’s ambitions so clear-cut and well-formulated from the outset? Was the co-emergence of a new theatre scene and a suitable venue really as simple as a hand and a glove? Rutten opens with a quote from drama critic Irving Wardle – ‘Mickery became the most important of all British theatres: the only one consistently hospitable to the Underground movement’ (92). He situates Mickery as a key locale, ‘a haven’, within the new movement of international, experimental theatre – ‘…all the groups worth seeing will be coming to Mickery’ (ibid.); he conjectures that Mickery may even have played a part in its proliferation. But he is clear that not all incoming productions were ‘extraordinary and stimulating’ (98) – ‘The point is to show what is happening and what is being attempted’ (ibid.); ‘to show samples of the efforts being made in various places to revitalise the theatre’ (102). The only prerequisite is quality, whilst admitting that this is, of course, relative. The most striking aspect of in-coming work for him is the focus upon the actor, and attempts ‘to utilize the body more fully, more intensely, and more honestly’ (106); ‘shedding inhibitions’, even if this was frequently equated with shedding clothes.

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He is the first to provide a historical perspective in English, identifying crucial advances: in quick succession, the establishment of Mickery as a legal entity rather than a personal enterprise; the extension and regularisation of programme; the first receipt of government subsidy in 1970; and above all the move to the city in 1972, ostensibly in search of a new audience. In a photograph taken at the Noorderkerk in January 1972 – ‘Mickery’s first, temporary Amsterdam accommodation’ – The London Theatre Group rehearses an adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, each actor behind a white wooden frame, incongruous against the huge roofed pulpit (102). Whilst city proposals to convert the Capitol already existed, RtC’s plans were cheaper and simpler. Rutten appreciates the growth of the Mickery ecology: the existence of a supportive press – ‘They considered what was going on in Mickery not only interesting and stimulating for themselves and the public, but also beneficial for the national theatre as a whole’ (101); the enhancement of public appreciation with the publication of Mickery Mouth; the expansion of the Mickery circuit, Dutch regional theatres agreeing to present a selection from the Mickery productions – giving audiences the chance ‘of experiencing at first hand what Mickery was all about and thus lending support to the project’, and significantly ‘in order to divide expenses’ (102). In conclusion, he suggests the work presented at Mickery demonstrates the value of longer-term maturation than that possible under the Dutch system of two-year subsidy – ‘…grant an experiment the time it needs’ (108). Of the new auditorium he observes, ‘In daily practice it all functions most satisfactorily’ (104), adding that it provides a template for other initiatives in the Netherlands as well as abroad and anticipating the proliferation of ‘black box’ studios in the 1970s and after. And in an almost comic line-drawing, three small figures assemble the ‘flexible seating units’ – unfolding the rostra, pushing chairs on a trolley, slotting the seats into the stepped rake (105).

11 Failed conversations If many of our underground groups seem to be ‘popping off’ to Holland at frequent intervals this has been due to the setting up of the Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam. Since 1968 the Mickery has provided an outlet for the best new work of the groups which has been frequently unavailable in their own country. The Mickery was a converted farmhouse to which the director Ritsaert ten Cate invited Portable, Pip Simmons, the Traverse and the People

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Show during the period which followed the demise of Jim Haynes’ Arts Lab. (Ansorge 1975, 49) It was as an archaeology student in Cardiff that I first became aware of emerging alternative theatre practices. In December 1969, a friend from the student drama society gave me a copy of Jerzy Grotowski’s recently published Towards a Poor Theatre (1969). It was at the drama festival of the National Union of Students in Manchester in December that I saw Rowan Wylie from The Freehold Company demonstrate Grotowski’s exercise ‘The Cat’. Several colleagues participated in workshops run by Freehold and we returned home eager to make our own performances. In August 1970, Theatre-in-Transit as we called our student group – we travelled in a Ford Transit van – presented a wordless interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey at the Edinburgh Festival, in a ballroom-dancing studio. Next door, The Pip Simmons Group was performing Superman – Jimmy Olsen ‘Rock and Roll Son’ picking up messages from the superhero with a large papier mâché head through his electric guitar. Cartoon style acting, rock music, theatrical irreverence – we were amazed, won over! Early in 1971, we invited The Pip Simmons Group to Cardiff though we had few facilities. They performed on a small podium at the front of a lecture theatre, their sound system constantly interrupted by radio calls from passing taxi drivers. As Simmons recalls:

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In England when we toured we played mostly in universities and had to sleep on the floor somewhere. We made twenty or thirty dollars a week in England, and Ritsaert was paying fifty. We were very pleased. But you couldn’t go anywhere, so I spent most of it in the Mickery bar anyway. (Schwartz 1996, 52)

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Within two years, Cardiff was fortunate to have three venues that staged touring productions, all of which would make their way to Mickery – the Casson Studio where I saw Ken Campbell’s riotous Roadshow; a converted engineering lecture theatre – intended to build an audience in advance of the opening of the university Sherman Theatre – where I saw Simmons’s Do It!, The People Show, Low Moan Spectacular; and Chapter, a former high school opened as a multi-disciplinary arts centre in 1972, that permanently housed companies such Moving Being that had appeared at Mickery in 1970. Chapter’s beginnings paralleled Mickery’s move to Rozengracht. The Pip Simmons Group would become equally regular visitors to Cardiff, their performances always an essential event, required viewing particularly for fellow practitioners. And it was perhaps through contact with

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I’ve always had a childish belief that audiences should be shocked as well as amused. We made rough, honest theatre, with crude language and sex. We went in for heavy audience participation and sometimes gave the public a hard time. (Simmons in Schwartz 1996, 53) It was a potent and heady mixture. When I heard a rumour that Simmons wanted me to play Woyzeck, I made myself scarce. The immediate physical contact with audiences and reordered spatial engagement apparent in Woyzeck was also enacted at Mickery in productions such as The Masque of the Red Death (1977) and The Ballista (1984). Mickery and Pip Simmons would become synonymous. Simmons talks of RtC providing a stable framework for creativity, giving support

Mike Figgis, Redheugh, 1980

both venues that a form of peripatetic production developed. In 1976–7, Chapter programmed a series of month-long residencies resulting in sitespecific performances presented in the former school’s many rooms; participating companies included Waste of Time from Amsterdam, The People Show, and The Pip Simmons Group, who created a version of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck:

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even in failure – ‘He was learning with us and he didn’t hide it.’ In 1975, Simmons’s Children of the Night company presented An die Musik concerning Nazi occupation and the Holocaust – ‘It was my best work, and Ritsaert stimulated it.’ In the early 2000s, Simmons restaged An die Musik with a group of young Romanian actors. Those who had seen the original were disappointed. Yet its power endured: my own students were shocked and amazed at its brute physicality and the poignancy of its imagery. For this volume, I decide not to seek out Pip; he has already spoken, in Gary Schwartz’s Ritsaert ten Cate now (1996). I fear being too reverential to a key, and largely unacknowledged, figure in British theatre history. I suspect it might quickly slip into a desperate nostalgia, on my part, for past times and lost opportunities. And I think I would become too urgent, and technically demanding in needing to know how he did it: how he convinced actors to chain themselves naked to audience members for the duration of the interval; how he conspired the image of a naked concentration camp band disappearing in smoke that is seared forever into my mind’s eye. And, in the end, what of Woyzeck he thought I had about me. When The People Show came to Cardiff, I played saxophone with their musical director Mike Figgis, one-time member of anarchic improvisers the People Band. The small lunchtime rehearsal band would include colleagues from Cardiff Laboratory Theatre and from The People Show – Mark Long (tenor horn), George Khan (tenor saxophone) and Figgis himself on trumpet. Figgis was – still is – a sublime instrumentalist, one of the few film directors apart maybe from Woody Allen who plays on his own soundtracks, his haunting work evident on Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Timecode (2000). It was with The People Show that he first visited Mickery. In his introduction to Colleen Scott’s Man Looking for Words (1996), he writes: The Mickery was the kind of place that you could, like, drift in on a Wednesday and, like, dig any numbers of artists from around the world. In the bar you could find all the essential ingredients needed to make Art flourish. Serious young men picking up serious but pretty young women. No loud music, but lots of loud talking, critics talking to performers (imagine that) and somewhere Rits’ being naïve, enthusing about the work. (Figgis in Schwartz 1996, 8) In 1980 at Mickery, Figgis directed his first performance – Redheugh – that included his first film, with a subvention of £5,000. 74

I remember during the rehearsal week in Amsterdam asking Ritsaert a question about the set. I wanted to know what he thought about a bed. Should I use the big brass bed, or a smaller bed? He looked at me strangely and told me to do whatever I thought best. (9) Although hurt by an apparent lack of interest, Figgis realised RtC’s purpose – ‘A decision was made in the light of other work I had done in the past, and in the belief with some help I might become a more interesting Artist.’ It was an experience ‘that gives the courage to continue with a philosophy of work that is less intellectual, less protected, more vulnerable but also more potentially truthful.’ In 1982 Figgis created Slow Fade at Mickery; in 1983 he filmed Rembrandt and Hitler or Me. On the Touch Time website, he recalls the ‘chain smoking, alcohol fuelled entrepreneur’ – ‘I will always have him in my DNA.’ And in his own practice, he continues to experiment, an advocate of the use of new technology and filmmaking outside the studio system. For this volume, I decide not to seek out Mike; he has already spoken, in Man Looking for Words. I fear being awe-struck. But I fear, too, exposing memories and experiences of formative events: rendering them banal, simply through trying to relate them, trying to explain their personal significance to one responsible for their making – the impact on me of that image, that music, that ludicrous but inspiring moment of theatre. Vivid single occurrences, blurry nights in the bar, that made me want to do that too, that resulted finally in me writing this.

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12 Reviews: the work of Jac Heijer He writes for the daily press, though initially in a nearby city. Like a foreign correspondent, he brings reports of strange happenings in out-ofthe-way places, for a readership unlikely to ever venture there. He creates word-pictures, succinct descriptions of events that they will not know through any other means; his father was, Rob Klinkenberg later informs me, a drawing teacher who taught him to look, and look again, before drawing. He learns to take everything seriously, at face value. Although he can be critical and caustic, he becomes an important supporter of new work and of the policies of Mickery. It takes time. At the outset, he is in RtC’s words ‘naïve but responsive’. His summary of the initial period in a review published in Haagse Post on 13 December 1975 and tellingly entitled ‘Report of a Romance’ is a prime example of a developing signature style that mixes the anecdotal with the acutely observant.

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In the body of his reviews, two sections draw me – the first out of personal involvement, the other because it marks a transition in the history of alternative theatre. On 31 May in Haarlems Dagblad and in June/July in Toneel Teatraal, there are different reports from the World Theatre Festival in Nancy in 1975. In the daily newspaper, he opens with comments on Dutch company Het Werkteater, providing an immediate touchstone for his audience. He is at pains to note that New York puppeteer Robert Anton ‘who made his European debut in the Mickery Theater last month, won international fame in Nancy’; that the transvestite Angels of Light have already performed in Mickery, two years previously. And as he critiques programming decisions in Nancy, he is partisan: I was fortified in my opinion that when it comes to avant-garde theatre we in the Netherlands have been exceedingly spoiled over the last ten years by what Ritsaert ten Cate has sought out for the Mickery Theater. But he knows effective theatre. He lauds Peter Zadek’s production of King Lear; he remains unconvinced by Mémé Perlini and La Maschera’s stylised interpretation of Othello. He writes:

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…they did not offer me the slightest access anywhere. I always dream differently. And furthermore I do not like it at all when a container full of living crabs is poured out for fighting performers to roll about in.

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Although La Maschera had appeared at Mickery in 1974 with Tarzan, Othello would not be invited. In Nancy, I myself watched the performance with RtC. After about an hour of slow-moving action, he turned to me and said, ‘Do you know how it [Othello] ends? Then let’s go.’ Jac Heijer describes images and experiences that resonate for me too: passages into which all other memories of those productions seem to fold and concentrate – the angel in STU’s Exodus, with newspaper wings on fire; the tableaux vivants of scenes from Polish history in Teatr 77’s Retrospective… In Nancy, I was a spectator, alone, without a company. My time with rat Theatre had passed and Cardiff Laboratory Theatre was still in its infancy. But there were friendly faces, the group of Dutch journalists whose escapades he describes in the article published in Toneel Teatraal and entitled – in homage to US gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson – ‘Fear and Loathing in Nancy’. It is an irreverent tale of journalists on the loose,

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The Performance Group, Sakonett Point, 1978

buoyed by the success, and their part in the success, of Mickery – a drunken school trip, in which performances are barely mentioned, a perfect record of a time when the scene was fuelled by alcohol, and when a festival was also a hard-nosed trading post. And there unexpectedly, incredibly, am I – joining the ‘Club of Five’ along with Ruud Engelander. In the section headed ‘Terribly Angry’, I play a leading role in a growing quarrel between the journalists about the nature of their craft. In a restaurant, Heijer, Michiel Berkel (Het Parool) and I stand to explain to fellow diners that the argument is ‘a typical Dutch conversation’ and they should ignore it. But it is clearly more than that, an event of high drama, of high emotion, of potential schism; RtC is delighted. Whilst I can identify closely with Heijer’s sentiments – ‘why can I never win, working class child that I am’ – I have absolutely no memory of the happening. Perhaps I too was drunk; in the photograph that Gary Schwartz includes on page 44 of Ritsaert ten Cate now, Heijer and Nic Brink are deep in conversation whilst a smiling RtC looks straight at the camera, glass in hand. In May 1976, Sian Thomas and I, as Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, present Owls or Flowers? in Nancy. That winter, RtC invites us to perform Triad – in which we are joined by Maria Daley – at a planned feminist gathering in

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Mickery: two young women and me. I suspect that RtC foresees the provocation this asymmetrical grouping will represent. I decline the offer, fearing that the simple physicality of our work will not stand up to close scrutiny and critique within feminist discourse. By 1978, Heijer’s style is mature and highly economical. In October, he writes about Rumstick Road and Nayatt School by The Performance Group in NRC Handelsblad. Within the restricted space allotted to him in a newspaper column, he not only envisions the work for his readers but also leaves room for their imaginative engagement. This he achieves through a combination of ‘grey’ description and succinct points of interpretation that make no claim to be the final word. There is a simplicity and directness that mirrors the dramaturgical means and intention of the work itself. In Rumstick Road he lays out the general picture – the scenography, the technology, the main themes – before focusing upon particular details. Although there is some sense of the passing of time, there is no laboured listing of scenes. Instead, specific passages are evoked in a way that invites the reader to engage in a creative act, to make something out of another thing that they did not witness, are unlikely ever to witness. In contrast, the account of Nayatt School is chronological and straightforward; descriptions are prosaic and unembellished – who does what, when. But there is method in this. For, he concludes, ‘Nayatt School is an unbelievable performance’. His purpose is, I think, twofold. First, to infer that effective and complex theatre is here achieved through the combination of simple and seemingly disparate elements. Secondly, to imply that this poetics is only truly revealed through physical presence and firsthand contact – ‘Your mind is continually at work.’ He approves of and endorses the performances of The Performance Group – ‘The trilogy is the most important work of art that I have seen in the theatre in years.’ He is confident in his judgment, his eye experienced and sure through years of looking at Mickery. His considerable voice will be heeded elsewhere, his opinions confirmed later by others worldwide. Later, he writes intimately and at length of the work of solo artists such as Stuart Sherman though he always maintains a critical distance to RtC’s own work. In Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1986), he is both ‘captivated and bored’, whilst acknowledging: ‘In this production I hear the voice of the engaged, right-minded citizen in middle age’ – his kindred spirit.

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(Scenery and lighting designer; former member of The Wooster Group design team) Conversation: 8 May 2009, Brussels (by Skype)

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He speaks of the practicalities of theatre production. The Performance Group first performed in the Bovenzaal at Mickery in 1974 with The Beard. They brought nothing from New York, finding the few necessary objects, including a bale of hay, locally – ‘I don’t even think there was a soundtrack, or music.’ After 1976, they would morph into The Wooster Group and Mickery would become the base for their work in Europe, an analogue for the company’s ‘authorial space’ at the Performing Garage in New York that provided a similar ‘scenic footprint’. Performances were re-imagined there, duplicate sets for the Three Places in Rhode Island trilogy were built and stored there: for Nayatt School (1978) ‘a wooden house with a plexi roof’; for Point Judith (1980) ‘a wooden house on stilts and a tin frame house’; for Route 1 & 9 (1982) ‘the heavy metal table and the tracks to

The Performance Group, Nayatt School, 1978

13 Jim Clayburgh

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move and suspend the video monitors’; and for L.S.D. (…Just The High Points…) (1986) ‘the 7.5 meter table with all its attachments.’ In early performances, they would create different audience arrangements for different pieces, providing ‘not just the performance but the world in which we lived’. That came out of the tradition of environmental theatre, the idea that the audience would be reconstructed, reconfigured for each performance. And then as the aesthetic developed and the company’s work needed to travel with greater ease, the silliness of this began to strike us. We began to try and create, in a certain way, pieces that were easier to tour. Over time, there was more focus on the creation of the décor and less on the ‘social’ environment in which it took place, although the demand for specific sight-lines in regards to the stage ‘that are not compromised’ continued – ‘the distance from the last row to the edge of the stage more restricted than in other companies which played for 200 then 700’. In Three Places in Rhode Island, the visual framing of the work was very precise: ‘images were very, very, specific’. There was a painterly quality in the composition and juxtaposition of bodies and materials. The works were influenced by the Italian Renaissance: he cites ‘the house in Nayatt School’. ‘Rumstick Road resembles a Fra Angelico triptych.’ In Point Judith there is foreground, middle ground, background – ‘right out of a Giotto’. And the scenography – the physical setting – often came first:

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It becomes the home in which the performance takes place… an enlivened architectural place. This is contrary to a more standard scenographic approach where a decor serves the needs of... And technology was apparent, integrated into the stage picture, not hidden. This was, he thinks, ‘Brechtian’ in its challenges to illusion – ‘There is no magic. It is what it is. Paradoxically that becomes the magic.’ The ambition was to keep audiences ‘from becoming so emotionally involved in any particular moment of the piece that they are not seeing the structure’. As a result of ‘Spalding’s desire to speak to an audience’ performers looked out at them, directly – ‘And they are actually looking, not the glazed eyes.’ How radical, he muses, Rumstick Road must have appeared. At Mickery:

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The work was being seen in a space that was flexible enough to tolerate the demands of the performance. That wonderful fold-

ing seating system with the pop-in chairs, that allowed the audience to be placed around the centre section as in Sackonett Point, within a triangular frontal structure for Rumstick Road; and very ‘elevated’ for Nayatt School with the first row of the public three meters up. ‘The Mickery served as the staging ground.’ It was the place where the performances were effectively re-imagined for European touring – ‘It allowed us to figure out the rules that needed to be put in place to have it recreateable. First in Mickery and then in other spaces.’ For him, the process ran: Let’s see what the limits are that we can work within. At what point does it become impossible. What are the priorities that the piece demands? Does that light have to be exactly in that position or does that speaker have to be in that exact position. Or does that projector…or all three? At what point is the work compromised by the demands of touring? They would spend months working at Mickery: [Mickery’s] heart was modular but not mechanical. So you could move and alter and change ideas very quickly in that space. It was completely flexible; you could do anything with it, quickly.

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Simultaneously, lasting associations were established – ‘working with people who knew you and your work’, and vice versa. They were not ‘reinventing the wheel every time’ – either a theatrical wheel or a social wheel. I just imagined Amsterdam to be the hippest place in the world. Since many artists I knew were coming and performing at Mickery, it just seemed like that was the place where it happened. In 1982, whilst performing Route 1 & 9, The Wooster Group also presented Hula ­– ‘a record album interpretation’ – in the Bovenzaal. The performers, bare-chested, in grass skirts, played the vinyl record on the machine from Sakonett Point, Rumstick Road and Nayatt School, read the liner notes, and danced. It was ‘one of the funniest pieces that has ever been invented, truly, truly hilarious and gay and happy’. Elsewhere, it was paired with For the Good Times, a tear-jerking solo dance with words in sign language by Ron Vawter to a ‘country and western’ record played at sixteen rpm – ‘Basically the story of man saying goodbye to his family.’ 81

Over time the dialogue with the architectures of the theatres changed so that touring could become more realistic financially and artistically, because that dialogue, that conversation, is what required the most energy and the most time. By changing to a more standard theatrical framing the work proceeded in new directions. In later works, the scenography was always exactly as the company wanted and needed it. Each production would have its own travelling lighting grid – ‘no longer taking the geometric grid that might exist in the space and seeing how you can configure your piece into that’. Increasing production values demanded perfection: Every object we touched, we travelled with. That became the rule. Whereas before we were much more adaptable – to a new soundboard, a new light-board in each theatre. Once Brace Up! arrived, it became clear that the specificity of the works were better served by being even more exacting.

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Over time there was also a shift from a psychological, memory-based performing style to the creation of a detailed physical and vocal score – ‘how a word was addressed, the relationship to the microphone, the postures, the hands came up…’ This would prove taxing for collaborators from the Globe Theatre in Eindhoven during rehearsals for the Mickery-sponsored production North Atlantic (1983), when directorial instructions might be – ‘Walk over, pick up the mike, say the words. Say them louder, say them slower.’ North Atlantic used the same ground plan as L.S.D.: We used the opportunity at the Globe to retro-engineer L.S.D. and at the same time create a new space for North Atlantic. So in effect the table was in the same place on the same structure, with major alterations/adaptations.

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In Eindhoven, this new stage was positioned to extend out into an auditorium over the seats to the tenth row of audience. Its upstage side was moved up and down using motion of the orchestra pit underneath, moving it from five to thirty degrees of incline. A re-engineered and re-designed table climbed the stage powered by pneumatic pistons. It signalled a shift into a larger form of architectural presence. They purchased the structure, shipped it to New York and used re-configured versions of it in productions such as Frank Dell’s The Temptation Of St. Antony (1987), Brace Up! (1991), The Emperor Jones (1993) and Fish Story (1994).

In the late 1980s, with changes at Mickery and the growing support of Hugo de Greef and Kaaitheater, The Wooster Group’s base moved to Brussels. What then first attracted RtC to The Performance Group? The work was very novel, interesting, beautiful and exciting…at that time, as it is now, artistically great. And he saw it. He saw that. And he championed it. In the care and attention to the theatrical image – ‘Maybe he could see which way the company was going before they did.’ One abiding question remains for him. Why was the Mickery painted brown? It strove towards neutrality, being neither black nor grey. It was an anti-aesthetic – ‘an impassioned choice, a choice from RtC’s heart, but not the most attractive!’ And his lasting memory of Mickery: the disconcerting, smouldering smell of the ‘linguine’ board that was used on the walls for ‘tuning’ the acoustics.

14 Reviews – The Performance Group

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Rumstick Road: Anatomy of the Mother-Son Relationship Rumstick Road by Spalding Gray and Liz LeCompte. Company: Performance Group. Performers (leading roles): Spalding Gray, Libby Howes, Bruce Porter, Ron Vawter. Seen 6 October 1978 in Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. Amsterdam – To the left and right are two rooms made of unpainted plywood; they have a perspective that makes them appear deeper than they are. Between both rooms there is a construction in which someone sits behind sound equipment. He operates tape recorders, a record player and speakers. This is the constructivist (everything is verifiable) ‘environment’ of Rumstick Road, the second part of the trilogy by Spalding Gray and Liz LeCompte from the Performance Group, from New York, which can be seen in Mickery Theater. The starting point is the suicide of Gray’s mother in 1967. What is presented is not the case history of this woman, even though we learn in passing that she had mystical experiences and, according to her psychiatrist, was manic-depressive. The immediate subject is Gray’s reaction to the suicide and his investi-

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The Performance Group, Rumstick Road, 1978

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gation of the cause. Although Gray reports the material to us from his private life in detail and without fuss, its adaptation signifies more. Rumstick Road demonstrates how the son experiences the mother, how he himself seems to be reflected in her mental state, how he even identifies with her (out of fear, sympathy and curiosity), and how he attempts to ward off fear and death. This occurs by means of a collage of images. Family slides are used and conversations on tape with Gray’s grandmothers and father. This material is literally or figuratively projected onto the environment or the performers. Gray himself does not imitate the Gray of the past, nor does he portray fear or sadness. He provides the audience with information and is also the conversation partner of the grandmother, father or psychiatrist, as though the text on the tapes comes into existence at the very same moment. Sometimes he performs actions in the environment: he runs in circles, listens at a door and stares out of a window. It is not his performance that is emotional, but his actions in the given context. Both of the other performers, a man and a woman, perform equally minimally, but they are projections. The woman is the projection of the mother, seen by the son. In one penetrating scene, as she bends over, she shakes her head up and down with her long, lush hair, accompanied by passionate violin music. The parental house in Rumstick Road is projected over her onto the rear wall: the image of the turmoil and obsession of

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both the mother and the home, which to the son are identical. During this scene, Gray, who is in the other room, adopts the woman’s rhythm in the fluttering of his hands, as though a bird is flying up against a closed window. This image of a bird continually returns with variations. On one occasion, in the form of a roasted turkey on the Christmas table, photographed as a slide (yes, there is room for a sort of dry humour). Also, a letter is read out in which it is reported that a shot partridge has flown straight through two windows into the house and dropped down dead on the table. Bird, madness, death; they flow together into a poetic image. What is very skilful in my opinion is that all of this occurs so casually, so that as an observer, you are stimulated to make the connections yourself. The function of the man in the play is threefold. He is the doctor who massages the woman’s stomach with his mouth, an act that is transformed into a sort of love game. The doctor appears to be the father. The same actor later portrays the grandmother with a rubber mask on. The doctor is the father, is the grandmother, is the outside world, which refuses to understand the mother. Finally, the figure of the grandmother massages Gray’s face. This takes place on the table where the doctor massaged the mother at the beginning. The ‘grandmother’ presses Gray’s mouth open with her fingers so that his face seems to be a death’s head. I immediately saw the line between birth (mother’s belly) and death. Rumstick Road proceeds from an anecdote to a modern variation of the painter’s theme ‘the anatomy lesson’, although it is not the physical, but the mental, anatomy that is laid bare. A very interesting, sometimes gripping work of art, in which very simple, even banal means acquire a deeper meaning. Rumstick Road is something to be seen twice. jac heijer, nrc handelsblad, 7th 0ctober 1978 Performance Group in Nayatt School is Perfect Theatre Nayatt School by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte. Company: The Performance Group from New York Seen 19th October 1978 in Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. Amsterdam – Following the childlike innocence of Sakonnet Point and the Oedipal fears of Rumstick Road, the Performance Group is presenting Nayatt School, the third part of the trilogy by Spalding Gray, in the Mickery Theater. The subject concerns the chaos of madness; the form is detached; the tone is very ironical. The audience sits on a high bleacher, the lowest row of which is formed by a desk behind which Gray, as a pedantic teacher, gives a reading with phonograph records about The Cocktail Party, a play from the 1940s by T.S.

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Eliot. He plays an excerpt of dialogue from an English recording with Alec Guinness. Together with an actress, who sits to Gray’s left, he recites the entire dialogue between the young woman Celia and the psychiatrist. The subject of the conversation is Celia’s neurotic feeling that she does not experience reality as normal. The dialogue reminds one of Gray’s mother’s madness, as this was portrayed in the second part of the trilogy. Then, the woman lived in a personal, mystical world, which was neither understood nor acknowledged by the family. She committed suicide. Following the reading, the play transfers to the rear of the performance area. Here, a closed room has been built, covered with glass. It has been constructed in such a way that the perspective is in reverse. The front of the room is lower and narrower than the rear. This odd perspective can also be understood figuratively. It made me think of dream images, which are far off, and yet still close by and distinct. I have never seen such a paradoxical duality in the theatre. It goes further than Escher’s optical jokes, because the concrete form holds the emotional meaning at a distance and yet, by one and the same means, draws it close by. What takes place in the room is also paradoxical. It represents both a living room and a doctor’s examination room. A woman is examined for breast cancer in the same manner that children play doctor. A lecture is held in the style of horror movies about the unstoppable growth of cancer cells, whilst a little dome-shaped tent billows up and down inside the room. We are already familiar with this red tent from the second part of the trilogy; it was the domain and the symbol of the neurotic mother’s personal world. Meanwhile, an actor places upon a long, narrow table: a replica of the desk on the bleacher, more and more phonograph records and plastic glasses, as though they were cancer cells. Around this table, which stands next to the room, four children in costume, aged around eleven, and three adults perform the last scene from The Cocktail Party in an absurd manner. This scene gets totally out of hand, though in a strict and stylised manner. Amidst chaos, the children die, and two performers flee like Adam and Eve from paradise and ultimately Gray is the only one left standing. Gray, who we know from the second part of the trilogy as the son who tries to fathom his mother’s madness, is here a doctor, psychiatrist and teacher at the same time. In these roles he allays the emotions that his mother’s suicide has aroused, so to speak. What is important here is to know that both the son and the mother were Christian Scientists, a belief in which matter is spirit and sickness an

error of the spirit. In this world there is no place for medicine or psychiatry. By taking on the role of doctor and psychiatrist, Gray illustrates how he abandons the religion of his youth, conquers his fears and accepts reality, even if this reality is represented as madness. Nayatt School is an unbelievable performance. The ear and eye are continually stimulated. Information is provided per scene on various levels. Your mind is continually at work. The language of forms exhibits the aesthetics, emotion and originality of poetry. The trilogy is the most important work of art that I have seen in the theatre in years. A complex mental state is represented through simple means, in which nothing is left to chance. With this trilogy, Gray and LeCompte inhabit territory in the theatre that had previously been the preserve of poets and painters. jac heijer, nrc handelsblad, 20th october 1978

15 Photographs

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Mickery Pictorial I: A Photographic History 1965–1987 (With introduction by Janny Donker). 1988. Amsterdam: Stichting Mickery Workshop. Mickery Pictorial II: A Photographic History 1988–1991 (With epilogue by Janny Donker). 1991. Amsterdam: Stichting Mickery Workshop. Two books of black and white photographs, at least one image I initially assume for each production in the history of Mickery: from three men seated before cardboard gravestones in If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them (1965) to the dancers and musicians of Halau o Kekuhi from Hawaii at the Touch Time Festival in 1991 – evidence, schedule, testament. Weighty tomes of grainy likenesses: the unfolding roll call of a growing scene, famous productions, performances long forgotten; mugshots of a generation, familiar faces, the unfortunate dead; records of transitory episodes, of a world since gone – ‘Time has been no kinder to the avant-garde and its theatres than it has to the rest of us’ (Mickery Pictorial I 1988, xviii. Stage photographs take us back to a single moment in time, now irretrievably lost, when those gestures and grimaces – now frozen into stills – possessed an immediate relevance to the people not shown in the picture, who were watching and who expected to see something of particular importance to them at that specific moment of their lives; an immediate relevance, even if their expectations were frustrated and the performance only puzzled them or aroused their anger. (xi) 87

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Concept Theatre, Fairground, 1975 – moving the boxes

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As always, I search for myself. In the photographs of rat Theatre (93–5) I am absent, off-camera, difficult to confirm I was ever there. But that’s me high-stepping, and then collapsed in the rising water in 1989 in Brith Gof’s Gododdin (Mickery Pictorial II 1991, 423–5), my body steaming in the car headlights. What is impossible to judge – in the driving, artificial rain and slanting shafts of light – is the scale of the ice hockey stadium in Leeuwarden where the performance was staged. At the beginning of the portfolio, the camera concentrates on the actors, who begin to face out towards the observer: illuminated, energised figures – cut-outs in the blackness – their motives and actions in plain view. Later, it is disorientated by the increasing complexity of scenic layering and juxtaposition, and fragmentation of the stage picture. Where should it now look, it seems to say? Throughout, the architectural context is difficult to grasp – the all-encompassing shot that allows us to see actors and theatre is always unachievable. This could be anywhere. …the photograph should bear witness to the spatial continuity that envelops the audience together with the performers; it should prove that the photographer was present at the event he records, not merely watching a picture. This does not imply that the audience should always be included in the photograph; nor need intimacy lead to the exclusive use of close-ups. (Mickery Pictorial I 1988, xi)

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Easier said, perhaps, than done. But we do catch hazy glimpses of the audience. There: confined in wire cages in Tenjo Sajiki’s Ahen-Senso (1972) (67); there seated in the small units first used in Concept Theatre’s Fairground (1975) (117); there again in the larger, hovering containers employed in Fairground ’84 (323); there listening in on the ‘Bovenzaal Discussions’ between practitioners and critics (1982) (269). No indication, however, that in Joint Stock’s The Speakers (1974) (97) they moved from speaker to speaker on their soapboxes in an open space; or of the distinct audience locations in Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985) (349–55). Glimpses of Mickery too. There: in the small dais, that indicates we are still in Loenersloot in pictures of La MaMa (1970) (25); in the distinctive module rostra with circular holes on which rat Theatre stands (94) and Pip Simmons’s band plays (63); in the odd inclusion of wall or floor; in the stage crew – masters of the ‘Mickery machine’, who rarely make it into the record – lifting cables with poles to allow the movement of seating units in Fairground (115). Here are images of controversial performances – Jan Fabre’s De Macht der Theaterlijke Dwaasheden (The Power of Theatrical Madness (1984)) (330-1), with its provocative pauses and repetitions. Of influential performances, such as Impact Theatre’s The Carrier Frequency (1985) (342) and Needcompany’s Need to Know (1987) (370–1), that arrived fully formed, with new dramaturgical schema. Photographs of works that will become part of an alternative canon – Tadeusz Kantor’s Dead Class (1977) (167–8) and The Wooster Group’s L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…) (1986) (361-3). Here, too, are records of practitioners cutting their teeth: filmmaker Mike Figgis’s first use of the medium in Redheugh (1980) (241). En masse, what is evident? The presence of the nascent British scene – from the physical theatre of Moving Being and The Freehold Company, to the cabaret of Low Moan Spectacular, the political works of Gay Sweatshop, and the barely controlled anarchy of The People Show. The appearance of the ‘second wave’ of American companies in the 1970s – Mabou Mines, The Performance Group, Theatre X. The continued commitment to particular individuals – Ellen Stewart, Terayama Shuji, Pip Simmons, Liz LeCompte, Jan Lauwers; the burgeoning of the Dutch/Belgian scene in the 1980s; and the sophistication of Mickery’s own productions, so difficult to appreciate at a distance. Apparent, too, is the catholic nature of a programme founded upon quality – selective but non-judgemental – that mixed styles and genres, juxtaposing the comedic with the formally conceptual, a policy celebrated ultimately in the Touch Time Festival (Mickery Pictorial II 1991, 451–66) and reflected in these volumes: in a visual history without attendant commentary.

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For those who were there, the photographs work as an aid or revelatory spur:

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Photos are more likely to startle us: Was this really what was done, then and there? Surely I must have missed this moment? Was this what I got excited about? Inexorably, mechanically, the camera has lifted a single moment out of the context which alone determined its significance. A single gesture, executed in one specific niche of the space-time continuum, has been left to fossilize on paper as its original meaning evaporated with time. (Mickery Pictorial I 1988, xi) Some productions I know only indirectly through the accounts of others; I encounter them here uncannily, as if I always knew what they looked like. For others, the identification is immediate, seminal encounters brought to mind: the ridiculous papier mâché head of Pip Simmons’s hero in Superman (1970) (25), the extraordinary poignancy of the final smoke shrouded sequence of his An die Musik (1975) (122). What is it for those who were not present there? Historically fascinating, perhaps, but how can one explain the humour of Ken Campbell, the righteous anger of rat Theatre, the impertinence of Needcompany? For the effect of photographs is to render the performances dumb, a-temporal, of the same order; what escapes the camera is presence, live-ness, heat… Later, in perusing the ‘Register’, a list of productions that concludes the first volume, I realise that images are missing: of La MaMa’s Futz (1967), Pip Simmon’s The Pardonner’s Tale (1969), Tenjo Sajiki’s Salomon, The Human Airplane (1971), Robert Anton’s Puppet Show (1975); of Mickery productions such as Camera Obscura (1970). How to explain the absence? Was photography in the context inappropriate or difficult to achieve? Were the productions adjudged not worth recording? Were the images lost or misplaced in the interim? Or were those involved simply unconcerned with such documentation? More lacunae in a history...

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(Dramaturg, artistic director of Toneelgroep Oostpool, Arnhem; spectator at Mickery 1972–90, apprentice technician 1979–80, ma thesis on the history of Mickery 1972–9) Conversation: 17 December 2008, Amsterdam His talk is of influence and impact. As a schoolboy in the late 1960s, he had a teacher of Dutch language and literature who ran a theatre and, exceptionally, video club. She arranged a trip to ‘this strange theatre, where lots of things were happening’; ‘Someone in Loenersloot had decided to open his farm, his barn, to exotic groups.’ Even the critic in NRC, the daily newspaper that his family received at home, was enthusiastic. He thinks it was for the presentation of the first Mickery Workshop – ‘It was absolutely slaughtered in the press.’ I do remember sitting on hay bales – the setting of the play was something quite rural – and two images have stuck in my mind. One of them was of a naked girl who climbed a rope and went out through the window in the roof, nude, which symbolised the sunrise. Of course, I was very impressed by that! Not only by the

The Performance Group, Point Judith, 1980

16 Rob Klinkenberg

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girl but also by the fact that you could create such a theatrical metaphor in that way, which was unknown to me. There was a guy who walked up to the audience and addressed us which also was completely novel, and he was dressed, if you could use that word…half of his body was naked, lengthwise. The left-hand side was naked; the right-hand side was covered with chicken feathers. He had a rooster-like hood on his head. I don’t really remember what it was about… But it was this formative experience – these two single images – that caused him to consider the potential of performance and propelled him into a life in theatre. As a student in Amsterdam, he attended the fortnightly premieres at Mickery – a regular and shared anticipation of ‘something new, something exciting’ that drew a regular and increasingly familiar crowd of enthusiasts, critics, theatre people and students. Invariably there was discussion afterwards, albeit informal and social in aspect. As Mickery lacked a ‘green room’ and backstage entrance, performers came out to the bar, complete with its pinball machine, that stayed open late – ‘It was the first place you could see the actors afterwards, see the people who were on stage.’ Most memorable was The Pip Simmons Group who regularly took over Mickery – ‘A village that moved about.’ ‘It was exciting and innovative and impressive.’ The ‘slave’ handcuffed to an audience member in the interval in Pip Simmons’s The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show (1972); the shock of Children of the Night’s An die Musik (1975) in which Simmons directly addressed the losses of the Holocaust for a Dutch audience; the hovercraft boxes in Tenjo Sajiki’s Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun (1978) used to manipulate viewpoints ‘like a camera’. It was an education. He became a student helper, dragging the Mickery modules – ‘Horrible...bastards to lump about’ – but fantastic in being able to facilitate new configurations: ‘You never knew how you were going to be seated or what the place would look like. It was a surprise every time.’ By the time Mickery left Rozengracht – ‘It had been used to the bone.’ His own decisive experience came in 1978 with The Performance Group’s trilogy Sakonett Point, Rumstick Road and Nayatt School:

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I remember seeing the first one, which was Sakonett Point with all the drapes, the sheets hanging around, and sitting above, and I couldn’t understand it. I mean I liked it – no I didn’t even like it – but I felt it was something completely new. It was very hard for me to relate to it. And so I went again. It says a lot about the cli-

mate which Ritsaert created around him. It wasn’t just about ‘Do I like it? No I don’t like it’ […] Even if you didn’t like it or completely understand it at first, you went again because you knew that he was programming something that was in a way – would be – important, whether it referred to society or in the case of The Wooster Group to theatre itself which was more my interest. …the whole idea of montage-like theatre, being able to express yourself on different layers, not using language as the basis but one of the bases of the seven or eight things – there a gramophone player, there were little red tents in Rumstick Road...that you could use things like that...

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I remember not understanding that language; it was new theatre language and learning a new theatre language only happens once I think in your life. After that, you are ready for anything – and Mickery taught that. He considers that Mickery was more significant for a generation of actors and directors rather than a broad public; it had a profound effect on a particular number of individuals rather than the general theatre scene in the Netherlands. In demonstrating new approaches to dramaturgy and nonnaturalistic acting, it opened doors rather than producing slavish copies. Its flowering came at a time of affluence, of international travel, of beginning to look out with curiosity after the period of post-war austerity – ‘The things that come from afar are good’, as the Dutch saying goes. He suspects that Mickery’s success was partly due to RtC’s privileged upbringing and his understanding of the mechanics and mores of the Establishment: his was the acceptable face of radicalism. He embraced conservative critics and at the same time stayed aloof from various movements, such as the political theatre of the 1980s. He kept talking, never allowing Mickery to become marginalised. Through his bonhomie, he could gather people of different persuasions, from different ends of the political spectrum. He knew how to play the people who gave the subsidies; he knew how to pull in the critics; he knew how to communicate with an audience. He had the great fortune that he worked in a time when the people who subsidised theatre were not ringing the till all the time. But he laments the breaking of tradition with the ‘Tomato Action’, which so disturbed older actors and estranged audiences. For a time, everyone

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wanted to work in studio situations – in the increasingly pervasive ‘vlakke vloer’ (‘flat floor’) theatre – for which Mickery provided the exemplar. Eventually, only his own company – Globe in Eindhoven, where he worked as a dramaturg – took the ‘intellectual baggage’ of alternative theatre into the mainstream. In 1983, they would collaborate with The Wooster Group on the Mickery co-production North Atlantic, a riposte to South Pacific in which a group of American Navy Special Forces are on ‘a secret mission off the coast of Holland’.

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I think it’s hard to overemphasise the influence The Wooster Group’s shows in Mickery and the Holland Festival co-production with Globe have had on the Dutch contemporary theatre. In the first place directly on Gerardjan Rijnders, who, from 1985 onwards, used their techniques in a reworked way in his own montage shows, the first of which was Wolfson, de talenstudent [Wolfson, student of languages] in 1985 at Globe. Interestingly, Rijnders’ inquiry into montage led to a number of (younger) directors, both in Holland and in Flanders, making their own explorations in this field. I think specifically of Guy Cassiers, Carina Molier, but also Ivo van Hove, Jan Lauwers and Alize Zandwijk. In the 1970s, Mickery was, he feels, pre-eminent but less so in the late 1980s when it became one amongst many but still with remarkable instinct, particularly with the surge in Flemish theatre and a change in theatrical aesthetic: a change signalled with the staging of Jan Fabre’s daylong Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien (It is the kind of theatre one could expect and foresee) in 1983. The increasing shift from modes of direct address to more oblique conceptual strategies in Mickery’s staging of works akin to performance art, he found disquieting. Of one performance he complained to RtC: ‘There’s not enough happening.’ Thereafter it became the commonplace of their meetings. After every show, RtC would enquire playfully, pointedly: ‘Well was there enough happening for you?’

17 Reports Mickery Dossier 4: The Masque of the Red Death, The Pip Simmons Theatre Group. 1980. Amsterdam: Mickery.

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It is one of a series of small, published reports that includes Dossier 1: Mickery in Amsterdam (January 1972–1979) compiled by Inez Hollenberg and Rob Klinkenberg; Dossier 6: Cloud Cuckooland (1979) with Henri Schoenmakers’s research on audiences for Tenjo Sajiki’s production; and a second vol-

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The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, The Masque of the Red Death, 1977

ume of Dossier 4 (1980) dedicated to Pip Simmons’s Towards a Nuclear Future (1979). They are printed on coarse brown paper and mainly in Dutch. Produced over a short period, their political purpose is evident. They make a persuasive case for alternative forms of theatre production, drawing together conceptual notes, photographs, scripts, reviews and studies of reception. In their formality, in their attention to layout and their inclusion of lists, references and footnotes, they demonstrate serious intent. They construct a history to date, from the inside. They mark out areas of achievement and stake a claim for continued subsidy on ground already won. Dossier 6 provides a detailed picture of Terayama’s 1978 production. Each of the eighteen scenes has a dedicated page, with timings, short textual description and images. There is also a gridded floor plan of the main hall at Mickery that illustrates how the three mobile seating units were located in relation to each other in the various phases. Imaging these movements against the timeline, one gets some idea of the kinetics of the performance, of the choreography of audience, of the technical effort involved, of the empty hall as a fluid field of production.

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The dossiers on the work of Pip Simmons go further in enabling us to envisage productions from their relics. And in addressing the essential quandary of devised performance. It’s a powerful thing, the playscript. We regard it not only as the strategic plan for performance, telling one what to do – ‘For successful results just follow the instructions’ – but also as the authoritative document of performance, telling you what happened. It is prestigious. You can publish it; hold it in your hands; transport it; read it; reread it; subject it to literary criticism, to textual analysis. It is tangible, uncomplicated and unitary. And it validates acts of theatre. Devised performance – certainly that of the 1960s and 1970s – by definition lacks such explicit documents, and hence is frequently under-represented within the purview of theatre historiography; it is plays and playwrights that are regarded as the legitimate carriers and authors of dramatic tradition. Its nature is one of accumulation and disintegration – first, towards the identification and gathering of concepts, actions, texts, places and things that are assembled and composed in space and time according to operative aesthetics and ideologies (choices of particular genre and style) and available techniques and technologies. This involves two basic processes: selection – what gets into performance – and orchestration – how it is organised once selected. What begins as a number of fragments momentarily adheres and then falls to pieces as another set of remnants. The resulting pieces are usually taken as the evidence for its fleeting existence. Profoundly, it always seems on the point of disappearing. Such performance generates documents – before, during and after the event. Those before – production notes, publicity leaflets, press releases, scripts, plans, contracts – are often proactive and utopian. They envisage activity. They want things to happen. Those made during – video and sound recordings, photographs, bodily scars – often assert their authority as the true record of what really happened. Or else we ascribe that power to them. And those after make claims to efficacy and ownership – reports, reviews, audience questionnaires and financial receipts. Dossier 4: Towards a Nuclear Future successfully situates the production within contemporary debates in the Netherlands, reaffirming the underlying political dimension of Simmons’s work often under-regarded by British critics. The script is included in full. So too are extended quotations from Robert Jungk’s book The Nuclear State (1979), a major inspiration for the work, as well as further contextual material – lists of nuclear accidents and of those to be thanked – which provide insights into the depth of contributory research. In all this, Mickery’s affirmation as co-producer of the particular political stance espoused in the production is clear. In De

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Groene Amsterdammer (17 October 1979), Nic Brink quotes RtC: ‘We do not see our activities so much as a mild form of resistance, but as an expression of our desire to know how manipulation works.’ In the foyer, a teleprinter churns out Reuters’s reports. The included reviews, translated into English, are numerous. They recurrently highlight not only key aspects of the production, such as actress Sheila Burnett’s presence in the audience as one of the ‘undecided’ in the debate – ‘Sometimes she is actually physically pulled into the action, she goes along with it, another time flees into the audience, creeps carefully away, returns with a carbine, appears again with a protest sign’ (André Rutten in Trouw 11 October 1979) – but also in the range of their complementary descriptions that allow one to piece together a sequence of discrete moments of performance, like looking at the individual frames on a photographic contact sheet. Dossier 4: The Masque of the Red Death includes examples of the kinds of documents that theatre perforce produces, such as cue sheets for sound and lighting, providing some idea of the labour and complexity of production. And some sense, too, of how plans change and a viable concept materialises; RtC’s initial proposal ‘To utilise the hooversystem [sic] in a different way’ complete with provisional ground plans is never adopted. But his vision of using ‘at least six totally different spaces’ (15) becomes the operative principle. The whole building becomes the site for itinerant or peripatetic performance. Scene 1 ‘Introduction’ – in which Edgar Allen Poe lies on a hospital bed attended by the Shadow – is in the foyer; Scene 9 ‘Burial’ is in the garden; Scene 11 ‘Red Death’ is in the Bovenzaal. In the hall, a rectangle of transparent screens that can be raised and lowered excludes the audience from the action as they watch through the glass; later it confines them. Clad in white, hooded gowns and masks, the audience is assigned the role of privileged guests and ‘forms a living set for the action’ (Pieter Vrijman in Het Parool, 129) – ‘We would be happy if you wear your capes throughout the performance as you are therefore identified as a reveller and those without may have crept in secretly to infect us’ (75). In the photographs, the audience surrounds the action, sitting informally and lounging on the floor. Little wonder, as the performance lasts three hours. And in the convergence of these texts, sketches, enigmatic images and plans are intimations of a sequence of events and of movement around Mickery. A production appears…dimly.

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Tenjo Sajiki, Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun, 1978 – maquette

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18 Erica Bilder (Stage director, presentation skills trainer and writer under the title Erica Bilder Works; former production assistant at Mickery, and production manager and assistant to RtC, 1977–80) Conversation: 13 May 2009, Amsterdam In The Missionary and the Libertine (1997), Dutch author Ian Buruma describes the first time he saw the East – the imaginary east. It was at Mickery – ‘the headquarters of the international avant-garde, a kind of United Nations of world theater’ (xi) – in 1971, in the work of Japanese director Terayama Shuji’s company Tenjo Sajiki. He relates vivid impressions of performance – grotesque figures, disconcerting images, weird sounds, discordant music – without remembering the story ‘or even whether there was a story’. And of being swept along ‘from room to room’: ‘The Tenjo Sajiki took full advantage of the Mickery; all the rooms were used, as well as the courtyard round the back of the theatre (ibid.). In one room a girl in a sailor suit was bent over a chair and was having her bottom spanked in slow motion by a man wearing a top hat. A ventriloquist in bone-white makeup was sticking pins into a replica of himself…

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In the end we found ourselves in one large room, which was like a fantastic brothel, filled with girls, midgets, opium-smokers, dandies and drag queens. (xii) And as the scenery came crashing down, and the lights came up, Mickery was revealed as no more than ‘a large messy warehouse’. Buruma’s text demonstrates how incomplete or faulty the record of performance may be. If this was in Rozengracht then it must have been 1972, and if he saw Ahen-Senso [Opium War] (1972) why does he not mention the wire partitions that confined the audience: the act that so disturbed a critic who had been a prisoner of war? Surely the ventriloquist appeared in Mojin Shokan (1973). Yet in striking pictures, he evokes all the strangeness and overwhelming sensual power and lasting effect of Terayama’s work. Buruma’s abiding impression is of the actors of Tenjo Sajiki ‘hanging out’ during the day in the Mickery café, reading magazines, playing pinball, speaking a language he did not understand – ‘I was like a child who has sneaked into the caravan park behind the circus tent, to watch the acrobats and clowns and lion tamers gossiping, cleaning up, eating and drinking, or taking naps.’ The architectural layout and limitations of Mickery serving to bring the backstage, the offstage, into public view… RtC had first encountered Tenjo Sajiki in 1971 in Nancy; in 1972 and 1975, he invited the company to create and present a ‘loose trilogy’ at Mickery – Ahen–Senso (1972), Mojin Shokan and Ekibyo Ryukoki (A Journal of the Plague Year) (1975). Steven Clark describes the works as ‘tailored for site-specific performance outside of Japan’ (Clark 2007, 109) that took advantage of Mickery’s unique architectural configuration: ‘It was the size of a basketball court with a ceiling three stories high, there was no stage, and it used flexible seating units that could easily be reconfigured within the space’ (110). In Ahen–Senso the audience entered through a rear door, into the dimly lit main space: ‘...there were no stage, no seats, no props, no set and no actors’ (111). A framework of walls then descended, dividing the audience into nine groups, actors appearing in individual rooms in apparent pursuit of a criminal. Passageways were gradually blocked with wire and the audience was moved into the basement. Clark notes that they were given bowls of soup laced with the sleeping drug Broverin, though this may be one of several theatrical myths that begin to circulate around this increasingly notorious company. Mojin Shokan included sequences in complete darkness, requiring Mickery staff to stand covering illuminated exit signs with their hands. Of Ekibyo Ryukoki, Clark writes:

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The audience was seated on all sides of a square stage that could be divided into four equal quadrants with black curtains. Throughout the performance the curtains were drawn in various combinations so that the action onstage was never visible to the entire audience at once. The goal was simple. That no one see the entire play and that everyone be forced to imagine at least part of it, creating part of the story on their own. (117)

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Terayama’s productions were uncompromising in their inclusion of long sections in Japanese and in the handling of audiences. Early in its history in Rozengracht, they reveal Mickery’s potential as a site for new production practices: Tenjo Sajiki uses the building to inform both dramatic structure and to locate activities. And the trilogy presages the organisation of audiences further developed in Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun (1978). Clark concludes that rather than simply making performances, the company was engaged in ‘an occupation of the space and a temporary land-grab within a nation not their own’ (118). During our first meeting at Touch Time Gallery where, after 25 years she is once more assisting him, RtC finds an extraordinary artefact – a maquette of Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun (1978). The baseboard is a gridded floor plan of Mickery; the pieces are the modules within which the audiences were seated – the units for Cloud Cuckooland were newly built and could accommodate up to 20 people; those for Fairground had originally seated only 15 – ‘There were these huge generators outside with huge tubes going into the theatre.’ Her first job was as a traffic controller, overseeing the movements of boxes and the opening and closing of box curtains from a high perch, instructing the stage crew on radio headsets. And with much animation, she and RtC begin to re-imagine the performance, by rearranging what went where and when. This miniature set, like a childhood toy, acts as an aide-mémoire; they imagine the theatre, from their different viewpoints, using the simplest of means to reanimate the kinetic and choreographic complexities of the production, and the changing relationships of action and audiences – Mickery the board game. The model is signed by all those involved in the production. Later, she tells me that she plans to have it restored and to present it to the Terayama Memorial Hall in Misawa City, Aomori-ken. Welsh author D.J. Williams once noted, ‘When the many things I remember actually happened, I haven’t much of an idea [...] but I can locate them with a degree of certainty.’ In our second conversation, her memories are spatial: RtC’s office across the courtyard away from the theatre – ‘a

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little shed with tar roof’; the Mickery annex, a former church and carpet warehouse, where Squat Theatre lived and created Cool King Kong (1978); the bar which seemed to migrate every season; the main hall – ‘Anything we could do with that box has been done with it’; and in the 1979–80 season, the addition of the projection room within which she organised a series of afternoon seminars with visiting artists for Mickery ‘diehards’ and students from local theatre schools. Artists were also invited to select two films to be shown during their residency, shown on 16mm, or by a primitive video projector ‘like a fridge’. Memories compartmentalised too: of a specific and temporally limited set of experiences in her life. She arrived in November 1977, in response to an advertisement on her university departmental notice board for assistance, paid work, with the video section of Cloud Cuckooland, in which a bogus journalist interviewed audience members about their various experiences. She stayed for three years. She was given increasing amounts of responsibility that were often presented simply as tasks to be done, without discussion of their broader significance. But there was, she suspects, a political aspect to this, to an infusion of young blood and new perceptions, in order to loosen structures and attitudes grown rigid. So, it was she who sought out the printer and prepared the material for the first of the Mickery dossiers on Cloud Cuckooland – ‘He realised at a certain point if you don’t do something that’s all that’s left – people’s memories’; ‘Let’s start to make history, something more tangible.’ In 1979, at the age of 23, she undertook a scouting expedition on behalf of Mickery to the usa, Poland, France. She decided that she couldn’t imagine the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the theatre. She negotiated with Mabou Mines who after a disappointing visit to the Holland Festival with Dressed Like an Egg (1977), would only bring Shaggy Dog Animation if there was a guaranteed audience. Though most performances at that time sold out, this was the one thing Mickery could never guarantee. They brought A Prelude to Death in Venice (1979) – to the Bovenzaal. At Christmas 1979, for the first time, RtC did not prepare dinner. Instead, he left the ingredients in a large box. In the theatre, he had left another box – a single, unwieldy Fairground module to be used in the forthcoming Mickery production Outside (1979), directed by Neil Johnstone. Mickery was by now staging at least one production per year ‘coming from the brain of Ritsaert’, often springing from ‘socially related political ideas that he wanted to make a statement about’. It was intended that Outside should address the Seveso chemical disaster (1976). Significantly, in his absence, the group did something else. She reflects on his artistic role: 101

I don’t think Ritsaert was a stage director in that sense at all. He was a person who got all the ingredients together, who knew what he wanted to see. I feel he was a collage artist in the broadest sense, bringing people together in collages, bringing objects together in collages… He takes things, he manipulates it, puts it together; and if you have talented people, it works out well. And upon Mickery productions: The sky’s the limit. Anything was possible. The building was used in its totality; to make a theatre that was actually a black box...to make it site-specific. ‘I slept four hours a night; I had the time of my life and I just worked. And studied.’ In 1980 she left for a scholarship at Wasada University in Tokyo. Later still she sends me a photograph of Terayama’s tomb in Hachioji City, flanked by statues of his two dogs Wagner and Nietzsche.

19 A lecture

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Ritsaert ten Cate. American Theatre in Mickery, 1965–1991, The Chronicle of a Love Affair, revised version. November 2007

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In a lecture presented on 22 January 2008 at the ‘L’impact de l’avant-garde américaine en Europe et la question de la performance’ international conference, Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, RtC describes the significance of visiting American artists in the history of Mickery. Over a period of 25 years, he presents 120 different productions. He calls it a love affair. It begins with Nina Simone’s concert in Loenersloot, though more practically with Ellen Stewart’s phone call in December 1965 – ‘Hi, honey, I’m Ellen Stewart. I hear you have a theatre, so do I. We should get together because I’m organizing a tour.’ In August 1966, La MaMa arrives en route to the Edinburgh Festival with Tom Paine – ‘…we had 100, 120, 150 people showing up in this small Dutch village for these shows; the house was jammed with people who came to see this work. The Dutch theatre world would never be the same again, not ever.’ La MaMa returns with twelve productions, in quick succession. The first La MaMa contract requires fees, per diems and accommodation. The business of import begins, and the endless task of making it viable – finding the money to restage Robert Wilson’s Deafman Glance at the

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Spalding Gray: Sex and Death to the Age 14 (Three Monologues), 1980

Holland Festival; selling Mabou Mines’s The Saint and the Football Player (1976) elsewhere in Europe to help cover the cost, for Mickery could only ever hold 250 people – ‘if we stuffed them in sideways.’ For Richard Foreman’s Café Amerique (1982), the audience of 60 is crammed into the alcove. But it is in the upstairs Bovenzaal, holding only 30 or 40 that Spalding Gray works on his solo storytelling performances. Co-production – initially simply sharing costs – with festivals such as the Nancy Festival becomes an imperative. Only in that way is it possible to stage Enchanted Miracle (1973) by Angels of Light from San Francisco. One economic solution is to invite American directors to create work at Mickery – John Schneider of Theatre X becomes a regular guest, and collaborator in Mickery’s own productions. Another is to be opportunist – proposing stagings of Wooster Group’s contentious, ‘blackface’ Route 1 & 9 as part of the celebration of 400 years of diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and the usa. The offer of funding is derisory. The Wooster Group comes anyway, and so does the ambassador who plays the diplomatic game as expected but concludes: ‘Not over my dead body would this production have been part of the program if I’d known what it was.’ The international attention and approba-

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tion conspired through Mickery may have helped to ratify and secure the company’s position in the usa which had been compromised by the controversial production. Late in his own life, RtC is aware of the passing of others: of the suicide of Robert Anton – ‘We should have taken care of him, rather than loved him to death for our own purposes, although to this day I’m not sure what “taking care of him” would have meant’; and of Stuart Sherman who brought five performance works to Mickery between 1978–81 and who died from aids in 2001 – ‘At first I didn’t know what to say, but then told him I loved him, and thanked him…’ Taking care… But whilst his human sympathies are laid bare, the underlying reasons for his ‘love affair’ remain undisclosed. In 1987, Mickery co-ordinates the European tour of Peter Sellars’s production of Robert Auletta’s adaptation of Sophocles’s Ajax for the American National Theatre: ‘…filling a stage with high-ranking officers of the US supreme command, musing about their versions of life and death, of good and bad, against the service entrance backdrop of the Pentagon.’ Part of the financing is generated from a VPRO television production. RtC is zealous in his support, coming ‘at a time where I sort of felt like temporarily getting lost, not seeing too many hopeful signs.’ It’s totally American, if based on a European classic, but merging, touching on some home truths which can (or should be) read for what they are by both, by all of us wherever we are.

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Auletta describes the setting: The place is America. The time, the very near future. America has just won a great victory in Latin America. The forces of the left have been decisively beaten. The war was a long and bloody one, marked, on the American side, by a bitter competitiveness among factions of the armed forces and a deep animosity among some of the generals.

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In one sequence the full horror and pathos of conflict is revealed. In a clear perspex box the accused Ajax, in combat clothing, sits in several inches of blood: framed, caged, exhibited. He thrashes and flails, communicating in sign language and accompanied by hysterical laughter. Power, constraint, self-justification and their companions – incomprehension, irrationality, chaos – in a single, highly illuminated image. The ‘heart of darkness’ exposed. Here at last for RtC is sophisticated theatre that tackles major themes of

American contemporary history, through the lens of classical drama. Sellars works in the Kennedy Centre in Washington, close to the twin ghosts of Watergate and the Vietnam memorial and ‘…in the hazy distance somewhere the White House’: theatre emerging from the political core, from an institutional centre, rather than the fringe. And Sellars is unafraid to be polemical, about politics and art: …it is our task to render issues in complexity. To be able to face complexity. To be able to face the little grey areas that other people who are involved in financial transactions or governmental transactions cannot for the sake of their jobs acknowledge. But this is theatre, too, that transcends easy analogy with a contemporary situation – at that time ‘Iran-gate’. Theatre that, for RtC, ‘finds its final completion with us […] as a statement of one human being to another’. The libertarian, humanist cast in his politics persists, finding echoes in the performance’s final chorus:

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It’s not easy to be on this earth, With its warrior stars and furious men; It’s hard to pierce the night, and difficult to see the day; but if we aren’t careful with every moment, every sight, the dark will come in with the tide, and the future wipe us out.

20 Titus Muizelaar (Actor and director; founder with Jan Joris Lamers of Maatschappji Discordia, 1983) Conversation: 17 December 2008, Amsterdam He is a practical man of theatre. His parents were theatregoers with a passion for Harold Pinter; at the age of fifteen, they took him to Loenersloot to see If There Weren’t Any Blacks…He remembers the intimacy, the extreme proximity, the ‘black-tie’ atmosphere. And the possibilities it held: I stuttered, so theatre was one way to get it together. Every time I went to the theatre, it made me realise that there were possibili-

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ties for me to speak out. And I liked especially the Mickery productions because they were, in my eyes, very complicated. I saw it from the first minute to the last, although I couldn’t say what I understood. At the age of sixteen he was accepted into drama school in Maastricht; in 1984 Mickery presented Der Schein Trügt by his company Maatschappij Discordia. He contends that he was always ‘more a consumer than a philosopher about the things Mickery did’ – ‘For me it was more a joy to go there than a realisation of what it meant in the Dutch landscape.’ But he affirms the impact on the Dutch scene and particularly on evolving groups in the 1980s – the direct influence of The Wooster Group on the work of Gerardjan Rijnders, for instance. I’m sure that all those kinds of groups, all the kind of directors who started in that time, who later became directors of the big companies, they all started at Mickery – whether it was La MaMa or it was Wooster Group or Deafman Glance…

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Mickery provided for him a kind of education, enhanced as much by publications such as Mickery Mouth as by the productions themselves – ‘I went there just to see the possibilities of society.’ The inclusion of disabled actors in Robert Wilson’s Deafman Glance was an instance of personal revelation. And Pip Simmons recurrently demonstrated for him how a new immediacy and new kinds of iconography could be integrated into political theatre; ‘Apart from the personal things of inspiration, it helped me to surrender, surrender to the medium of theatre.’ Experiences at Mickery stimulated the urge to emulate, to try to do that too. By the early 1980s Dutch institutional theatre had, he thinks, settled into an easy complacency comparable with 1969. When I went to the Dutch theatre, there were these strange people who called themselves actors and who were behaving ridiculous, and the audience loved it. I never understood why they loved it. So it was in 1982 that he became involved in the infamous ‘Bovenzaal Discussie’ at Mickery associated with the Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf programme. On the night before the televised event – there were only two channels in the Netherlands, ‘so everyone would be watching’ – he travelled to meet RtC, preparing for revolution: 106

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‘I watched all my colleagues’ performances, gave comment on this, and interviewed them about what kind of thing they did.’ He roamed the audience with a microphone, asking his peers about their beliefs and their starting points, why they wanted to make theatre. It was here that he was physically slapped in the face – ‘I was proud of that.’ ‘It was a really hard discussion!’ It was direct challenge not only to tired discourses around theatre but to the industry and bureaucracy erected and elaborated upon essentially ephemeral, disposable acts. His own presentation, with Jan Joris Lamers, of the final scene from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf used the props of the previous presentations,

Maatschappij Discordia, Der Schein Trügt, 1984

...because I was really planning to do something there, thinking ‘This is the opportunity’; and I talked with Ritsaert about what I wanted to say. You had six theatre companies that were big, with forty or forty-five actors and twelve performances. He said you have to go and tell that. And I did, live on television, and I said to really outstanding, famous actors: ‘You have to stop. Your work is rotten. It is lousy. Finita la commedia! Please.’ And everybody was ‘Whooh’. And Ritseart was sitting at my back, and every time he said ‘More, more’.

presaging the ironic knowingness that became a familiar of postdramatic theatre – ‘It was on the props of the others that we built a new kind of theatre.’ This workaday lack of artifice would become Discordia’s signature: ‘Talk normal. Don’t pretend there is more than there is.’ But then came Peter Sellars and his re-embrace of theatricality… He is clear about the political aspects of Mickery’s programme, always uncompromising and uncompromised. But he notes the irony of the Ten Cate ‘old money’ transforming into an acute political awareness, though this was manifest obliquely in ‘an abstract Marshall McLuhan “The medium is the message” way’. And he is unsentimental and candid about RtC and his productions – ‘At the moment he started to make theatre, there were already groups of the same intelligence.’ About his significance and role in Dutch theatre – ‘It was his hang-up.’ As a curator, he holds that RtC’s choices were important ‘in the landscape of this particular theatre field’; but that he remained ambivalent about this field itself, exhibiting a kind of myopia towards Dutch theatre. He rarely went to see it – ‘He was more likely to fly to New York than travel to Arnhem to seek out a new group.’ Yet it was he who produced Discordia’s work when they had no financial support – ‘Here’s the space, here’s the money…’ And provided enduring prescriptions – ‘Don’t accept anything…not even your own work.’ He had a very good eye and nose for what was important – now – in Holland. It was to do with his big horizon: sometimes he had the idea that he could see over the horizon to see what was happening there. Maybe we call it visionary.

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As a postscript, of the many obituaries of RtC, his rings truest – ‘A fantastic example of someone who didn’t spoil his life.’

21 In his own words Colleen Scott, ed. 1996. Man Looking for Words: A choice of texts written by Ritsaert ten Cate. Amsterdam: Theater Instituut Nederland. How can Mickery’s twenty-five year history of avant-garde production be communicated in an age when we tell our stories through the medium of profit and loss analyses? (Scott 1996, 100)

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Through a glass darkly: as remembrance of times past, as ideas carried forward and still resonant. A man looking for words, but never lost for

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Mickery, Rembrandt and Hitler or Me, 1985

words: here are descriptions of experiences, passages of polemic, anecdotes, aphorisms. And analects: experiences of practice turned into parables, into pedagogy – ‘Just about every text I write is about the future’ (138). In his own words, what is revealed, in retrospect? The overriding sense is of time: the passing of time, the need for time, the pressure of time, the meaning of time, the waste of time, the perils of inertia – ‘Those able to carve out enough time to sit back and consider what’s happening will shortly discover that very little is’ (35). And of the influence of history. He resists overarching categorisations of work according to period, style, company. Memory of theatre, he writes, is comprised of ‘single, highly individual and unforgettable experiences. More than that is neither necessary nor desirable’ (62). In a glimpse of his own artistic attitude to time, he describes his own

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staging of Simeon ten Holt’s composition Canto Ostinato at the Polverigi Festival. I chose to arrange Time. Time just for looking and listening: a Time Check for the self with the aid of four grand pianos, a hundred candles, and a screen noiselessly televising the news of the day. The performance is demanding. It lasts several hours; many spectators depart before the end.

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Five o’clock in the morning, some forty people stand applauding. We’re enthusiastic and proud survivors, and the sound of clapping hands is carried away in the freshening wind (50). He is candid, about who did what to whom: clear that he himself conceived, directed, wrote and designed twelve productions. Putting the record straight concerning: ...the origins of Mickery: ‘an organisation I began in 1965 to organize, produce, and make theatre’. ‘At the start, I had nothing but eager curiosity to sustain my choices. Guided by a simplistic determination that I liked something, or I didn’t, my theatrical diet was adjusted, step by step…’ (53). At Loenersloot, he evokes images of both Nina Simone singing Mississippi Goddam, and of scraping vomit off the walls after its rental for public functions. – And policy: ‘Theatre makers and the public were brought together in shared debate over what was minimally food for thought, or was good, or brilliant, or an utter failure in spite of being a reasonable effort’ (ibid.). ‘A theatre must be filled with people who make sounds and move meaningfully while a public watches and applauds what is basically an intricate traffic jam’ (128). – And survival: ‘I also learned the existence of an intricate nightmare of rules and regulations which determine the functioning of our society; also in terms of its relationship to and with the arts. Learned that these could be applied, circumvented, or even made to adjust themselves; belief that they need not only be experienced as handicap’ (54). – And endings:

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I stopped Mickery because I made three discoveries. First, that whatever Mickery had done, whatever had provided adventure and surprise, had become institutionalised. I also realised that 25 years creates a lot of baggage…It was in-

creasingly impossible to escape old images with which we no longer wished to work. And third, even as an institution Mickery could no longer exist without European coproduction…the extremes were being squeezed out. It was the extremes which had kept Mickery artistically alive. (ibid.) There is here a certain regret, for the loss of Mickery’s role perceived as promoting raw ideas without guarantee of success: ‘the space, the time, the means and the money to continue this was gradually eroded’ (67). ‘It seems that measurement, not memory, has become the arbiter of value’ (55). He conjures the intensity, heat and passion of discussions in Nancy – ‘and they were about the art’ (22). A world of promise: ‘when we – the audience – could almost be sure of not getting what we bargained for when we saw a show’ (63). This is what Mickery conspired. Always on the side of the artists – ‘people I principally considered friends’ (53) – he cautions them to work with real circumstances rather than unattainable desires: ‘The only thing we have to work with is what is now. The only time we can make time is…now’. He recommends that they ‘give themselves the time, the focus, the long-term energy required to keep going as an artist over the long-haul’ (38). This is what Mickery offered.

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There is no change in the need for time, or the requirement that an inspiring climate must exist for good theatre to develop. Theatre is not and can’t ever be a sluggish process of manufacturing one product after another. (ibid.) He is revealing: – About concept. Following the instigation of the research plan ‘Making theatre beyond television’ in 1978, television was used in Mickery: ...as light source, as a carrier of information, as another character in a production, for the sound of its white noise, and other of its translated characteristics. We tried to discover and apply what it does and does not do, what it can and cannot do. (81) Media became an equal partner with performers and audience, and the three spaces at Mickery were utilised: 111

Each space was visually connected by soundproof windows, creating sightline restrictions we could manipulate. Three simultaneous performances provided different experiences of the same content. (84–5)

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There is dramaturgical sophistication here. Effectively, a performance of one and a half hours generated four and a half hours of dramatic material, and ‘extra product’. Where now is the singular theatre object, that which we conventionally assume to be merely a script under active animation? Theatre becomes dispersed, as a field of affect. And in this, Jack Lang’s televised face turns metaphor: ‘There were myriads of fine lines, not as in wisdom and beauty, but as in decay’; ‘Time stopped for me’ (81). – About personal practice. For him, it is a mix of intuition and ‘digging for connections’ and fascination with historical process. Rembrandt and Hitler or Me for instance resulted from a happenstance of the publication of Gary Schwartz’s Rembrandt: His Life, His Paintings, characterising Rembrandt as ‘star and utter bastard’; ‘The Rembrandt Project’, a scientific attempt to determine which paintings were his, which by assistants and which fakes; the exposure of the Hitler diaries as forgeries; the Mickery under threat; and a personal life ‘in total disarray’ (73). – About unfulfilled plans. ‘And, high above it all, diagonally built over the main square, a cathedral construction of building pipes as suggested by the Welsh group Brith Gof’ (19). I had no idea he was considering our work in this way. Unexpectedly, he prefigures this volume: I can barely make sense of it all. I can consult my memories of what was done, and why, and how, and read various essays, articles, books when my memory needs refreshing. From memory, texts and photographs become pieces of a puzzle describing a joyously rich theatrical line in which everything, now nicely wrapped up and tucked away, seems normal and precious, warm and close. But look up and look around, and this neat and snug structure shatters in your hands. Theatre is only what is here and now. Memories and books are only that: memories and books. (89)

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(Managing director, Theatre X, 1979–81; worked on projects for Mickery from New York, 1985–7) Conversation: 14 May 2009, Amsterdam Her first contact with Mickery was as managing director of Theatre X. An early task was to provide bail for Jan Fabre and his visiting company who had been arrested for simulating male sex in performance, for Milwaukee was a ‘conservative, middle-class, white-bread’ city. In Amsterdam by comparison: ‘All the colours were still running, the rainbow still had threedimensions, people still had that charmingly, naïve innocent optimism and everything seemed possible. Even for people who were older…’ At Mickery: ‘It was wonderful, magic.’ ‘Anything was possible; that was the feeling. You wanted a person, a thing, to do something, to go somewhere, to have an experience…all possible.’ The only barrier was one’s own limitations, and these were peeled away – ‘And that was the gift of Mickery.’ Theatre X became regular visitors. Mickery paid enough money to keep the company solvent. Producing four or five shows per year with a company of seven on an annual budget of 125,000 dollars, trips to Amsterdam could generate 50,000 dollars. And Mickery came to Milwaukee – ‘Ritsaert

Mickery, Vespers, 1986

22 Colleen Scott

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was God to Theatre X.’ He would monitor the progress of productions, take its members on stimulating walks in the botanical gardens, or fly them to New York to see Tenjo Sajiki’s Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun. And Mickery’s technical staff would travel to the usa, to assist in staging works such as Scenarios for the Living/for the Dead (1983). The attraction of Theatre X? ‘They were, in a good way, malleable.’ The company was open to suggestion, an important factor that would lead to their participation in RtC’s own productions. And John Schneider as a writer had the ability to translate schematic or evolving ideas quickly into text for theatre. RtC was ‘very good at seeing potential’, and guiding that talent. Above all, he ‘fell in love with people and the things people did.’ And thus they fell in love too. And at a time of stress and sadness, on the day before the scattering of his ashes and flowers in the harbour in Amsterdam, she provides personal insights into the man, his methods and motives: Why did he do anything he did? Because he was interested and curious – or very curious – and wanted to see what he could make of it. His main function was to find work that he found interesting.

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A substantially novel approach, driven by personal interest rather than audience or market expectations... It was never a question of money, though ambition was always tempered by a sense of practical realism. There was also a very thick strand of common sense running through it all, which actually heightened the magic. So while you could say ‘Well what I’m going to do is jump off the floor and hover’, common sense suggests that you can jump off the floor but you’re not going to stay there. You’re going to end up on your butt. And it was okay. This necessitated clarity of working practices at Mickery: If we are going to be responsible about what it is that we’re showing the people, then we’re also going to do what we can to ensure that everyone knows what they need to know to make it happen. And close attention to audiences:

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He’s a communicator and he knew that to communicate an idea you have to dress it in a lot of different ways and then you send it

out there. And it will be caught – [the] various types of expression by various types of people: I acknowledge my choice and I will take the consequences of my choice; I’ve chosen it because… One aspect of this was the magazine Two and Two that she would edit as a means to distribute information, particularly within a changing Europe, as the central bureaucracy evolved from ec to eu. A shift that momentarily seemed to offer new funding but that eventually resulted in the withdrawal of national sources and responsibilities. He was not Dutch in his work or his life. However there were some aspects of being Dutch that were still very evident and one of them was his need and ability to be confrontational. Ritsaert did it better than most because he had style. He was not a political person; he was cultural…

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But invariably at the core of his own productions there was a political stimulus, such as the video of Omera Sanchez drowning in Vespers (1986). ‘He had to have a hundred ideas for every one that worked, but he had to have those hundred ideas to get that one. He wanted to book Richard Nixon in conversation with Doris Lessing.’ ‘Surprisingly, it came to nothing.’ Many of his concerns were with unanswered questions of the 1970s – ‘Ritsaert was not very comfortable with the Sixties.’ In his productions, he was a pragmatist – ‘This is what I’ve got, and what can I do with it. But also this is what I want to express. I’ve got these things. How am I going to make it work?’ He did a lot of preliminary storyboarding; above all, he was a designer of space. If you want to make him happy put him in an empty space and tell him he can do whatever he wants. The most beautiful house we ever lived in was in France, a rundown place, ready to fall apart when we bought it. By the time he was done, it was gorgeous. He loved to fill places. His concept was always complete and total. At Loenersloot, he had worked with what was available – at the time. This is also what you have to remember and that was another reason why Mickery would end. Because there wasn’t very much that was so terribly fascinating that was going on at that time. Yes, you could still find things to book but was it stuff that grabbed

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your guts? Reza Abdoh died and he was the best of the last, or the last of the best. And after that...? By the mid-1980s, ‘people were getting busier with money’. Work was getting more expensive. But ‘stopping Mickery was nothing to do either with money or politics’: He was ready to do something else. He was bored. The scenery was changing; the people were changing. It was getting harder to find people who were interested in making the kind of work that he found at all interesting. And so a final quest for a new direction at Mickery began – ‘Going to clubs in New York, like scared little kids. All these weird people, doing all these strange things. God it was terrifying.’ Important discussions with Peter Sellars…A long endgame… In listening now to our recorded conversation, I realise how much care we took with each other, and how much laughter there was. And how often we refer to RtC in the present tense.

23 A video

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The Pip Simmons Theatre Group/Mickery. 1984. The Ballista (dvd copy).

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It begins as a gallery opening – with an art object to view, wine, a roving television crew with camera and lights, and a female reporter. At the centre of the room is the sculpture – a replica of a Roman ballista or mechanical crossbow – and a hanging sheet of glass. ‘Do you think it’s dangerous?’ the reporter asks members of the audience. ‘I’m sure it’s dangerous.’ ‘But you don’t mind?’ ‘Well as long as no one stands in front of it, it should be alright.’ ‘How can an audience be manipulated before they know the facts?’ RtC had asked, though some seem already complicit in this work of feints and deceptions – ‘Yes I read about it in the newspaper so I came especially to see it.’ The reporter is interrupted by an effete and pretentious critic who characterises this weapon of destruction as art: the increasing tension of the bowstring and subsequent release ‘emphasising the spectator’s empathy with the art’, and leading to Aristotelian catharsis. He in turn is challenged by a ‘performance artist’, who indicates the obscenity of the object in such a context and who finally covers herself in fake blood in protest. In this volatile situation, the reporter maintains an evenness of tone,

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Let’s suppose it would be possible to redefine some basic rules of theatre by rethinking the meaning of the word performance and what we commonly understand to be its accepted form of expression. This redefinition is a description of the nature of performance which we could denote as ‘dramaturgical organisation’.

The Pip Simmons Theatre Group, The Ballista, 1984

as she will throughout, that flattens and renders equivalent and prosaic all events for her viewing audience. The artist – it is difficult to know whether slightly deranged or drunk – speaks of ‘the pregnancy of the space’. ‘Can you use simpler words that the public can understand’ the reporter asks. ‘It’s a personalised weapon….art-talk…a stupid tool…arttalk… Shoot the Pope.’ ‘Well it sounds all very interesting’ the reporter remarks to camera. The string is drawn automatically, tighter and tighter. Suddenly the ballista fires, the projectile is released, the glass shatters. But a protestor again disturbs the mood. ‘Did your machine still make its point?’ the reporter enquires before turning again to the audience: ‘Did you enjoy the firing?’ ‘I would like to see it again.’ ‘No I didn’t, not one bit.’ So commences The Ballista, a project written and directed by Pip Simmons featuring the ‘active sculpture’ of the same name by Alex Mavro, who plays the artist, and based on ‘In the Penal Colony’, the short story by Franz Kafka. ‘Design spaces’ are credited to RtC in this pilot project to formulate a dramaturgy for ‘theatre making beyond television’:

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Beyond is here an ambiguous word. Is it theatre after television, taking on its artistic and social achievements and implications; or theatre aside from or ahead of television, asserting a separate identity? Mickery is reconfigured. In the main hall, the ‘art gallery’ audience is ushered to banks of seats on two sides. From the balcony, a second audience looks down on the studio through a glass wall, as if from the television producer’s position, viewing the live video transmission over the shoulders of the vision mixers; from the studio floor they themselves appear as an illuminated tribunal. A third audience occupies the wire-fronted alcove; from this restricted viewpoint they see much of the action on cubic Sony monitors, icons of theatre production of the period. There are always two video ‘feeds’ from the floor offering two views of the same sequence, or two different activities simultaneously, and privileged close-ups: Mickery resembling a media facility.

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The public, performers, technical design and presence of the media in the form of television each contribute to the performance on their own terms, their own perceptions, projections, sensitivities and behaviour as ingredients of the whole. If we then create an architectural environment so that it will enhance the interaction of the events’ forms we can then think we are in a position to progress, restating our intentions as the whole develops. As the artist sweeps the broken glass, a change occurs. The ‘new man at the top’ introduces himself and the assistant removes his coat to reveal a military uniform. The work will become increasing ‘Kafkaesque’ in a series of twists and unforeseen changes. A number of long speeches will seduce and then appal in their shifts in register. The assistant delivers a lecture on the history of the ballista, noting its origins in the work of Dionysus using women’s hair twisted into tendons, and its technical specification. This resembles a television documentary commentary. But almost imperceptibly his words turn into an obscene reflection upon the efficiency of the weapon and its potential in execution – the escalating fear with the increasing mechanical tension causing ‘severe and abnormal stress effects’ leading to ‘outpourings of the most beautiful poetry’ from the victim. And it is the artist, now in chains, who is condemned; what began as an art exhibition is now turned into the spectacle of execution.

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The very excess of violence employed is one of the elements of the story and the fear and hysteria of the condemned man is not a pitiful side effect. It is one of the elements of justice seen demonstrating its power.

In this ceremony of execution, you the public are called to play a central role. Without you there is no performance. You will experience fear. You must be the witnesses, the guarantors of the punishment. You must participate in its righteousness.

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The artist is prepared: hoisted, and suspended upside down in a harness. ‘Unbelievable to have this live on film’ the reporter prattles; ‘In our country people haven’t been subjected to this for a hundred years.’ Suddenly the story turns again and the prisoner is reprieved, whether through the presence of the media or perverse magnanimity is unclear. In a hectic sequence, the reporter tries to get his response as he crawls on the floor. In a final revelation the ‘new commandant’ – who seemed the voice of reason – subtly rationalises the use of force, as his second-in-command is undressed and prepared for execution. The ballista circles chillingly, seemingly of its own volition. Under critique here are the myopias of the art world and the banalities of media discourse. But The Ballista is primarily a study in dramaturgy – ‘Facts intrude themselves on the theatre, event, art form: bringing into question their redefinition as art.’ Mickery remains resolutely political; in a space denoted ‘theatre’, it aspires to invoke discussion of contemporary injustices as much as theatre aesthetics. Although it struggles to break the representation conventions – the acting styles are still those of the 1970s – it signals the narrative ruptures and image overlays that characterise the emergence of the ‘postdramatic’. The television was not, as has become common practice in today’s theatre, integrated into a performance cutting the role of television to its own theatrical size; on the contrary, the television was given full co-determination on the theatre production. Here integration amounted to accepting a total confrontation – which led many to believe that Mickery could do without theatre; by taking this view they shifted their responsibility to Mickery, for Ballista and Kidnap did not form a conclusion, no final judgment; both performances were no more than preliminary, first steps in a theatrical study leading to an equally preliminary question to us; did we not pass beyond theatre a long time ago? (Joost Sternheim)

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24 Janek Alexander (Director of Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; former ‘impoverished member of international theatre jet-set’) Conversation: 22 December 2008, Cardiff Why doesn’t everybody sing for the joy of living? Why doesn’t everybody sing for the love of life? Why can’t we teach the human race To put a smile upon its face? And why doesn’t everybody sing?

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Chris Jordan, Fairground ‘84

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He can view it in close-up, and from a distance. The opening of Chapter – the multi-disciplinary arts centre housed in a former secondary school in the working-class district of Canton, Cardiff – coincided with Mickery’s move to Rozengracht. Both reflect an impulse of that period to house and present innovative artistic practices more appropriately. Over the 1970s, contact increased, culminating in the co-production of Pip Simmons’s Towards a Nuclear Future (1979). Appointed theatre programmer in 1981, he committed Chapter to closer cooperation – Spalding Gray, Bob Carroll, Leeny Sack had already appeared in Cardiff. Over the next five years he would stage Mickery-associated artists – Stuart Sherman and Theatre X, Epigonen, Jan Decorte, The Wooster Group; and participate in Fairground ‘84; and present Vespers (1986), the only Mickery production to bear RtC’s name as sole director. And Chapter would mirror Mickery’s programming policy by including films and talks to compliment themes emerging from productions: Mickery here – at least in part – as a mentor. Close up. The ambition of Fairground ‘84 was to present an impression of contemporary Britain at the Holland Festival in the year of George Orwell’s dystopian novel. The brief for each of the contributing British venues – Chapter, Traverse and ica – was to create a number of 20-minute scenes, that would then be performed for three mobile audiences seated in hovercraft units, that by this time were converted shipping containers. RtC was selective and critical. In Cardiff, he chose certain sequences – ‘the serious stuff’ – and advised on the redirection of others, cutting out elements of whimsy; ‘It’s no good’ he would advise of one comedy section. His instincts were acute, spotting tiny nuances, grasping immediately the theatrical possibilities of a section in which furniture was simply moved around. And this came at least partly from experience, from having seen ‘hundreds if not thousands of performances’. Though in RtC’s aesthetic choices there was frequently a bombastic element – ‘Verdi’s Requiem blasting out, smoke and effects.’ Under Alexander’s direction,

Alexander had a cameo role and he recalls with affection how RtC took over his performance when he had to return unexpectedly to the uk. In Fairground the accumulated technical expertise of Mickery staff was evident: If you wanted a room full of rain, it rained; if you wanted a thousand frogs, a thousand frogs. If you wanted fog…

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Work on Vespers commenced with the video of a drowning girl; it was biographical, notably in the inclusion of Winnie the Pooh, in whom RtC saw

Mickery, Fairground ’84, 1984

Chapter finally contributed five scenes to the dramaturgy overseen by RtC. The flexible, physical and improvisatory style of the Cardiff work helped facilitate the inclusion of other dramatic works that had not fulfilled the durational brief. It also provided the ‘glue’, the integration of the music of Pip Simmons associate Chris Jordan helping to cover the scenic transitions. At the end everyone carried a birthday cake full of lights. The actors walking through the space carrying birthday cakes illuminated from inside was a very poignant image.

himself reflected. The production was ‘wholly consistent with itself’. It was designed to tour, not remain locked into the architecture of Mickery, a problem, he thinks, of Mickery productions in the 1980s ­– ‘What was difficult about that, was that it wasn’t replicable anywhere else.’ Whilst visiting promoters could appreciate the levels of innovation in the use of technology and placement of audience in Rozengracht: ‘They couldn’t duplicate it elsewhere; couldn’t translate into their own environment.’ Hence the advances made in Mickery’s own productions rarely enter the historiography of alternative theatre. They were simply not distributed. Set in a dinner party, a familiar social context, Vespers addressed an Amsterdam audience directly – ‘This is you talking.’ But it did this with American actors whom RtC favoured because of their facility with language and ideas, and the subtlety of their playing in a televisual style, over which other material could be laid to create the unique assemblages that pre-figure ‘cut-up dramaturgy’. From a distant perspective. There was always a political thread running through Mickery’s choices – from presenting the work of British leftwing playwrights in the early 1970s, to bringing Anatoly Vasiliev and the School of Dramatic Arts’s Cerceau (1987) from Moscow in order to demonstrate creativity achieved under considerable hardships and pressures, to staging Brith Gof’s Gododdin (1989) in the context of a cultural minority in Friesland,

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He was a Dutchman. He was engaged in civil society, engaged in creating the future, wanting the world to be a better place. He was angry about war, he was angry about distress. The distinction was that RtC remained concerned, anxious that society was ‘immune to the world’s horror’. For him, Vietnam and Nixon maintained their potency. He was drawn back repeatedly to particular texts, certain images, lest perhaps the audience forget. The conflict in Lebanon was a scrolling backdrop to his work of that period. He read newspapers, not theatre journals, and installed a teleprinter in the foyer. He had an instinct for the public imagination, trends and ideas. But how to communicate serious situations – ‘the beauty and the poetry of it?’ He was frustrated that audiences could take theatre which he thought was a very powerful medium, and they could live with it, absorb it. They weren’t shaken up by it.

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Thus he turned repeatedly to theatrical extremes – to Pip Simmons and to Jan Fabre.

He didn’t tend to say much publicly about work. There are lots of photographs of him in the background, sitting on the corner of the stage or in the third row of the audience. He knew why he was doing it. In the 1970s, Mickery was dedicated to creating the right conditions to present in-coming work, to fulfilling the ideas and ambitions of the artists, though RtC would call for modifications to performances to fit Mickery’s programming policy – a sixty-minute production reduced to ten, for instance. In the 1980s, the trend was towards commissioning and producing – ‘a rolling programme of new ideas’. ‘So, whenever they hit the rocks with one idea, they’d suddenly move on the others. That began to wear out a bit.’ By 1984, a team was in place that could create technically sophisticated, three-dimensional performances – ‘He thought theatre could contain everything – it offered focus, direction to the audience, to a public which other art forms don’t necessarily do.’ Yet Mickery spent a good deal of the final decade, ‘working on how they could translate this work into forms that might be distributed or have a life beyond a one-off play in Mickery in Amsterdam. Films, television, books – because of limits of the audience’. Despite involvements with media, RtC was aware of the power of television to overwhelm people; in subsuming the medium into performance, he wanted television itself to be changed. Eventually, he suspects that Mickery:

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...faced the challenge that any development agency faces: that is, that you keep pushing, you need to pass on to someone else, you can’t do everything. They tried to take on more and more things with the hope that someone within that group would seize upon their ideas and carry them forward. If the team now understood how to create a Mickery production – its aesthetics, its modes of engagement – often with only schematic input from RtC, could it continue without him, or with other artists? That would be the lingering key question. The Frau Holle initiative was a final attempt to pass on the spare equipment and working space, the spare capacity. ‘Too many important themes; too many important times’, he concludes.

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25 A production programme

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Rembrandt and Hitler or Me. A journey, not a destination; the theatre project. 1985. Half A4, folded lengthwise; cover green, blue lettering, photograph of a newborn child. Across the centre pages are four line drawings of Mickery – axonometric projections that look down into the space from an angle of 60 degrees and that imagine potential structural reconfigurations. Each image shows a different arrangement of performance and audience within a re-ordered architecture: located in the open-fronted Bovenzaal; in the newly constructed video-room directly beneath it; in the main hall; in the enigmatic ‘dug-out’; in the alcove; in the foyer. The pages are entitled ‘Mickery 3-dimensional’; the whole building has become a ‘theatre-machine’. Audiences are separated and dispersed. Action is distributed throughout the building, offering new articulations of watchers and those watched, new viewpoints, new ways of observing. The juxtapositions, repetitions, interpenetrations and overlays of dramatic material that such new arrangements enable and facilitate sit Janus-like on a cusp, anticipating the onset of digital media, of the accompanying information overload within which it is no longer easy to distinguish truth from fabrication; and of political relativism. All that is currently possible on a desktop through a series of clicks – montage, multiplicity, simultaneity – are conspired here by analogue means, above all spatially. Embodying the aspirations of the ‘Making theatre beyond television’ project, Mickery now resembles a studio as much as a theatre. Television, and its procedures, becomes a co-determinant of production. Performance is self-evidently here ‘in the making’, all its technologies apparent. The archival record of Rembrandt and Hitler or Me is bulky ­– documents proliferating in the need for various participants to communicate across media, and providing sustained insights into concept and process. The performance takes place for three audience groups simultaneously. One of the audience groups is seated in the performance space itself, the other two audiences are seated in adjoining spaces which are connected to the performance space by way of large picture windows seven and a half meters long by two and a half meters high. These spaces are soundproofed and have an entirely different ‘soundtrack’ than the main space. This separation of the audience is an essential conceptual element of the performance. 124

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Mickery 3-dimensional, 1985

As ‘an archaeological expedition, revealing 20 years of Mickery research’, such placement references traditions of working directly with audiences and their perceptions. But the approach has shifted significantly – ‘Whatever each audience sees and hears, it experiences as a background with what another audience experiences. Or, reversely, only the priority in focus differs for each.’ ‘Contrary to other projects this one does not attempt to suggest, rather the opposite I would think, that one should see it three times in order to get the full picture (whatever that might be).’

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The projected imagery – large; small; on backdrops, moving screens, rows of monitors, reflected in windows – is ‘sometimes shared, sometimes privileged’. Some cloistered audiences witness privileged video footage, or hear soundtracks that do not either issue from or match the scenes that they watch. In the arrangement of images, soundtracks, texts, time becomes a major organising principle of dramaturgy: dramatic material is arranged against and over time, to ensure complex synchronicities of the live, the mediated and the pre-recorded. And there is a growing sense of the individual spectator taking responsibility for, negotiating his or her way through, material that is half-heard, overheard, caught out of the corner of the eye – as a new kind of subject/viewer. This again in a pre-echo of the contemporary experience of individual and computer, of multiplatform participation, but achieved by analogue means. The project begins with a document in which RtC outlines his initial thoughts, written in ‘half March 1985’. Recurrently, he inserts a cautionary shiver: ‘The Brrrrr reflects my feelings about some of the high and mighty phrasing, which reminds of the worst of social messianic attitudes.’ Unafraid of dealing with big issues, he is nevertheless aware of over-reaching himself artistically and politically. At this stage there is no structure, but certain themes are signalled: 1.4 More Intertwined with the above is the writing of Fallacy, addressing herself to her unborn child, about her expectations, projections, recriminations. What will you be, you the unborn, a Rembrandt or a Hitler…

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And certain scenographic concepts are presented as predetermined:

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4.1 …in front of the alcove there is a (new) lower area, about seven metres in depth over the width of the auditorium and roughly one metre deep. 4.2 Projection elements will be used in this environment which sometimes can be shared (see through) sometimes will provide an element of division… 4.3 Soundmixing this way [from live, taped, transmitted sources] is on top of the moving panels – another ‘control’ device to provide a guiding system how to add or take away various happenings as the background for others. 5.2 It needs to be clarified that inside the lower area there will be an environment of life size copies of the terra-cota [sic] soldiers […]. They are a permanent fixture for the alcove public, through which they see whatever is presented to them.

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So, a new type of context for performance – ‘A place and time machine?’ – is made ready; it awaits only appropriate subject matter. Here Mike Figgis’s film camera, mounted on a crane, will feel its way around – ‘touching, wandering in the environment created’; ‘almost in the sense of a child peering around in a world it yet has to learn to recognise for what it is’. Each participant receives a work dossier, a thick album of photocopied images that might inspire sets and settings, audiences, actions – ‘the platform from which we can usefully start’. Some collaborators respond immediately by fax, prior to meeting face-to-face. The performance may be about fakery; in his notes RtC alludes to Fallacy. But it is overwhelmingly biographical – RtC is aware it might equally be titled Rembrandt and Hitler are Me – informed by traumatic experiences of war and its aftermath; by the failure of political projects of the 1960s; by an on-going fascination with the role of the United States and the relationship between ‘old world’ and ‘new world’. It is ‘the arrangement of “things lost and found”, a personal archaeology, quotations from life and its expression through art, a proposition to exhibit a search, and the determination of the value of that search to us now’. In this, it foreshadows the preferences for personal narrative over fictional construct in much subsequent theatre practice. It is ‘a journey not a destination’. In this, it re-articulates the key role of experiment, at a time when alternative theatre had learned to refine its products, and the politics had entered the doldrums of the 1980s. And as Ronald Reagan’s State of the Union address is accompanied by 45 minutes of applause recorded in Bayreuth, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is backed by Apocalypse Now, it presents the researcher with an imponderable question: where is the work? For no single viewpoint is available: positions of singular spectatorship no longer seem useful for full critical apprehension. Engagement with the performance demands complex accounts of the work done – before, during and after – rather than evaluation from the standpoint of a theatre consumer. ‘Mickery 3-dimensional’ will not continue for long. Whilst continuing support for Mickery is now caught in a conflict of responsibility for funding between city and state, one can imagine that this ‘theatre beyond theatre’, this artistic impatience, came as provocation and challenge. And ultimately one step too far.

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26 Jan Lauwers

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(Artistic director, Needcompany, Brussels) Conversation: 14 December 2008, Brussels

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They were at the festival in Polverigi in Italy. It was at a time when driving from Brussels and performing for one night in a tent, at an event organised with a single telephone, still made sense – ‘These guys were crazy. They did amazing stuff. I didn’t realise. I thought this is normal.’ ‘We were on a hill. I remember the scene very well. Mike Figgis announced that he was giving up theatre to try his hand in Hollywood.’ His own company Epigonen was presenting its final performance; he himself had already decided to return to making visual art. He was, he admits, young and aggressive. On that evening, he criticised Mickery’s production Kidnap (1985) as ‘too sophisticated as political theatre’. The return challenge to him then was to do it better, using the same source material – ‘That was the night where Ritsaert decided my life.’ One production, at least – ‘I said, “I need company”.’ And that was the name they chose. ‘I started Needcompany because of Mickery.’ He had not known how to advance in the art scene, the conceptual practices of the period neither provocative nor emotional enough for him. In Antwerp in 1979, he had made working-class street theatre with a collective of young artists. During his national service secondment to a civic theatre, in a two-month break when he was supposed to paint the walls, he made a performance – ‘I was not allowed to be alone’ – that was eventually shown in a small garage. RtC came to see the work and so it began. ‘He was the only producer who was radically for you. I miss that.’ At Mickery, Epigonen would perform De Struiskogel (1984) and Incident (1985). At Mickery he saw The Wooster Group’s L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…); the experience would change his career. ‘Ritsaert decided in Italy that I had to make theatre. I went to Mickery. I met my wife.’ At the auditions in Rozengracht two hundred people appeared, amongst them a young woman who simply asked questions from the stage; he would marry Grace Ellen Barkey. The starting point for Need to Know – as with Kidnap – was a video of a television programme revealing the shrouded motives of a group of American military personnel, politicians and businessmen in response to a fictitious kidnap situation constantly prompted by the compère – ‘I need to know.’ During the extensive rehearsals, RtC would sit quietly, discretely, his criticisms oblique and frequently good-humoured. After one difficult scene RtC dryly commented: ‘You know Jan, it has to be boring sometimes.’ ‘Always positive!’, he comments wryly. In the early 1980s the Flemish scene had blossomed, with the simulta-

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Needcompany, Need to Know, 1987

neous emergence of several young, talented and ambitious artists – ‘It’s still a mystery to me.’ Some, including Jan Decorte, worked within established theatrical contexts, others outside – Lauwers himself, Jan Fabre, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. With a weak circuit of repertory theatre, there were no governing conventions of what theatre ought to look like. What subsidy there was, was evenly distributed. But Flanders was small – artists had to travel, to create ‘over the border’ work to subsist. ‘We could make small groups who were moving fast, who could travel cheap, and so it was quite easy to infiltrate in the festivals in Europe.’ Mickery was an immediate focus for a ‘local scene turning international’, presenting Jan Fabre’s Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was (It is the kind of theatre one could expect and foresee) (1983) and De Macht der Theaterlijke Dwaasheden (The Power of Theatrical Madness) (1984). And Mickery inspired and informed new attitudes to, and models for, organisation; Lauwers, Fabre, Keersmaeker still maintain independent practices without having become directors of major institutions – ‘We have our own things; still individual people who create our own things.’ They remain robust – an avant-garde become the mainstream, successful without compromising their ideals. He and RtC became close:

He was very political. But at the same time he was just interested in artists. When Ritsaert said ‘I want to work with this person’, he gave them complete freedom. There was not one moment where you felt that you had to do it that way because he wanted you to do that. No, he adapted. Always. This thing was a choice and he had to trust people and I think he trusted me a lot. And I trusted him a lot.

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RtC’s criticism was to the point: ‘It was always a good discussion – about essential things – which you cannot do when you go into an official theatre. You have to educate your actors; with Ritsaert they were always good actors, good people.’ As writer, artist, curator, architect and producer, RtC was perhaps drawn to those whose work transcends easy categorisation – ‘Official playwrights still don’t consider me as a writer. Likewise the visual artists.’ ‘That’s my freedom. They cannot catch me. That I learned from Ritsaert: to feel at ease with that. I am this.’ In sum: ‘He was never famous in one thing. He was famous with Mickery but he was not a famous artist or important academic. But he was there.’ There, at the highest levels. ‘He was a very good architect.’ ‘His vision on space…he had an incredible talent for that.’ The way he built walls a metre [out] from each window at DasArts to diffuse the light – ‘I learned that from him.’ Mickery was effectively his enduring work of installation art; a powerhouse of ‘energy and communication’. And the instant he stopped, Mickery would inevitably cease – ‘You have to have this visionary imagination.’ Of RtC’s production work: ‘It was always fantastic and always also not to the point to me.’ But they did plan to restage Rembrandt and Hitler or Me – ‘It was the best title ever!’ What I liked about Rembrandt, he thought big. If artists only talk about themselves or their own problems, it can become too narrow. He was never talking about himself. And it was himself. He put big problems on stage. And that’s something else I learned from him. To not be afraid to have the ambition, to be a bit more wise. Let’s really provoke a problem. Hitler or me – that’s a fantastic problem; maybe our biggest problem. RtC would eventually perform with Needcompany in Antonius und Cleopatra (1992). After the show he and Mil Seghers often appeared in the bar as a pair of idiots – ‘He was so radically an idiot. He could play that so well.’ Close to the end... 130

He said to me: ‘You are the last person I will see because tomorrow I am dead.’ I was not prepared for that. And I said: ‘Why am I the last?’ And he said: ‘It’s just a coincidence. Don’t think anything else. Just a coincidence.’ I was confused, but even then he was full of humour. He held my hand. Until the last moments he was making fun about everything. ‘I think we lost something on the way’, that’s what he said to me. When I left the boat he said ‘I’ll watch you.’

27 A letter ‘A Policy Round-Up, Dec/Jan ’85/86’ Suitably: 1st January 1986, RtC, Stockholm. It is clear I am on my way out, meaning, on my way to formulate either philosophically or in practice what the hell after all this I may be good at doing, and still have my heart in it. He is tetchy, frustrated, resigned. His letter to Mickery staff is by turns cynical, challenging, confrontational. He is under pressure, tested both personally and professionally. He has spent Christmas elsewhere. A long endgame is beginning. In taking stock of practical manifestations of ‘Making theatre beyond television’, he proposes a number of options for Mickery’s future:

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1. Follow the trend. Programme opportunistically (not necessarily negatively), bring whatever it is that seems [to be]‘good theatre’; include, if and when applicable, theatre beyond television. Emphasis on running a theatre building, presenting good theatre. 2. Main thrust, at the cost of most else, presenting as close as possible experiments, projects, theatre pieces along the lines – however unspecified – of making theatre beyond television. However with a clear public function, i.e. each and every presentation is open to the public at large. 3. Do something similar, but only for research purposes; run as long as is necessary to know what the experiment has established, or will not establish, or has failed in. Document the processes; be open only, as far as the theatre work is concerned, to a selected (unpaying?/ Members only?) public. Establish if possible alternative reasons for a wider public to be in the building (magazine-reading table; restaurant-bar; p.r. on processes going on, not the actual presentations Two and two for members et al). Only, if and when, produce results

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Mickery, Rembrandt and Hitler or Me, 1985

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of research in special projects for a large audience, but then elsewhere only. 4. A derivative of 3, with main emphasis on establishing material along the recording. Be in fact, mostly, an experimental television studio; presentation of theatrical finds only if and when possible within the financial priorities, and elsewhere only. This scheme of course could still be combined with having building partially open to the public as a selective (club) place for social meeting. 5. Refocus, without the building, main thrust to project specialists of any kind which have our, or whoever’s interest; look at spin off, commercial sidelines, whether television or marketing of alternative products, whatever they are as long as they come out of the products organically and would, with the right marketing, bring in money. In a theatre scene that increasingly resembles a market of commercial products – as the political concerns of alternative practice turn concep-

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tual and its artistic achievements are assimilated and emulated by others – Mickery might reaffirm its social purpose and historical commitment to experiment by focusing upon process. In maintaining such a stance Mickery and contemporary theatre may, paradoxically, part. But the letter acknowledges a counterargument in play at Mickery, of the need to become more businesslike in responding to the economic realities of production, of changes within which he himself may no longer play a role. He signals his disinterest in programming that necessitates immediate public success, or of constant controversy that might become equally formulaic. He regrets the need to embrace external market forces, rather than enacting an internal politicised agenda ‘with an eye on its surroundings’. He expresses frankly his growing interest in his own work and his growing distaste for ‘wheeling and dealing’. Above all, he is resistant to becoming a detached thinker and conceptualist within a commercial enterprise. This may, he admits, be a mid-life crisis – ‘Or maybe I am talking about ideals which in themselves may be relevant, seem to have lost any relation to a world of today, and the direction it needs to, wishes to, or must, take.’ He appears to welcome new initiatives: ‘Creating havoc with our public image of course is something which appeals to me’; ‘Creating a super-discotheque appeals’; ‘A restaurant I like.’ But he is wary of short-term opportunism, and of focussing upon certain age groups, limited in scope. He concludes with ‘Almost as an Afterthought’: ‘just to throw a spanner in the works’, ‘to establish a further discussion platform, maybe less moody than the last’. A list of items Item: A series of fashion shows. Signs of the times. Expressions of how we want to be recognised. Item: A series of games (people play), like Monopoly, and of course Anti-Monopoly; a game of misuse of social security (also a reflection of our society), and Ultimatum, about if and when you threaten with the bomb, and lastly A game of life (just published by Findhorn, Scotland). […] Item: An environment, e.g. have one made by Paul Thek, or a collective. […] Item: A concert, say Nina Simone, or music with the Michael Nyman Band…[…] Item: (and maybe not to forget a straight project) create the programme I’m thinking of which combines Winnie the Pooh, and other elements with the interview of the child at the earthquake in Columbia.

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The last will be realised as Vespers (1986), but here he is surely being ironic: his programme for the future exactly mirrors Mickery’s past, a reminder of the accomplishments of continuing, concerted application. His petition is to reinforce what Mickery is – ‘a place within which expressions of today’s signals shaped through art are being presented’ – and what it risks losing. He likens Mickery to a performed newspaper with an editorial board seeking ‘anything, anywhere’ that at a given point fits the editorial philosophy. Programming is then the recurrent manifestation of that set of beliefs, rather than ‘selling out’. The outcome is a kind of compromise. A period of hybrid activity commences – not as the pragmatic response to the withdrawal of subsidy as often characterised, but as efforts to reconcile Mickery’s form, function and core beliefs with new modes of production and circulation. Shortly, Mickery will devote its building to other practitioners under the rubric Frau Holle. It will become a player within emergent European touring networks. It will fulfil public obligations by staging work elsewhere. It will commit itself to individuals and practices with unfamiliar aesthetics, but familiar rigour. But RtC’s basic concerns will only again be fully realised when research and experiment and social impact become integral features of the syllabus at DasArts. Or, finally, maybe it is right to create a new Mickery, as a mystery? An organisation which does secret-things-in-dark-corners-whicheventually-inexplicably-seem-to-lead-to-theatre-projects-elsewhere?

28 Peter Sellars

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(Opera, theatre and festival director) Conversation: 7 July 2009, Los Angeles (by telephone) In ‘A text for Peter Sellars’ dated 8 March 1987, RtC writes: What is it we have with America? Or is it just me? This strange fascination with a place that seems either only half real, or goes over the top with reality. And measured by what, our so-called European normality? Or is it just difficult to cope with truth of extremes; an overwhelming scale of what humanity looks like, what we are, how we are, how we behave, what we are capable of. Good, bad, ugly, simple, complex, stupid, too clever by half. 134

Later that year, Mickery co-produces Ajax directed by Sellars for the Amer-

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My relief was and is that Sellars did this in Washington at a time where I sort of felt like temporarily getting lost, not seeing too many hopeful signs. Neither here nor there. In an America preIrangate, or whatever its label is nowadays, the play could have suggested Vietnam. It went beyond. By now reality has taken over and fits hand in glove with this interpretation, with what we now know. What we now know? What we always knew?

American National Theater, Ajax, 1987

ican National Theater at the Holland Festival, in an interpretation that casts the play as a modern American tragedy set in and around the Pentagon. It is notable for the central performance of deaf/mute actor Howie Seago. In his madness he splashes and gesticulates in a brightly illuminated perspex box, ankle deep in blood. At his death, water floods the stage. It is a considerable technical undertaking. And it requires RtC’s formidable persuasive powers to convince other European promoters to stage it.

On the telephone from Los Angeles, he reflects: Ritsaert had this classical Dutch balance of common sense, sheer stubbornness and a kind of absolutely unexpected whimsy. The admixture created such a fantastically volatile solution. For me

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one of the most moving parts of Ritsaert was his incredible high spirits. He had a galvanic quality and would carry off things that most people would say would be impossible to realise. Ritsaert’s sheer high spirits would carry the day. My earliest memories of Ritsaert are of this combination incredible, almost carefree whimsy and hell-bent determination. And the idea that he would take on a project of the scale of Ajax… It was how my work came to Europe for the first time. It was an absolutely crucial moment in my life and again I just remember Ritsaert being genuinely moved by the material. And not calculating what can we do with this but just genuinely feeling that this material needed to be seen. And I think his own depth of response was one of the most moving aspects of the whole experience; that it was seen and that it was seen by a very important audience in Amsterdam was because of the power of Ritsaert’s ‘say so’. What it means to run a theatre for a generation is that what you’re really shaping is an audience, shaping a public. The public that came was very powerful, powerfully engaged and the quality of the discussion that followed was a tribute to that audience and those years of shaping and stimulating that audience and that audience finding its own voice and identity. It was, in the very best sense of what 60s and 70s culture represented, interactive. I mean everything was a genuinely magical, floating dinner-discussion and political demonstration.

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A mutually supportive bond grew between the two men.

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I entered at a late phase, when Mickery was dissolving its physical existence and morphing into the free-floating world of ideas and imagination and diversifying into the projects that gradually became DasArts. Which was simply the idea that perhaps the place for active theatre workers is everywhere but a theatre. I think Ritsaert was onto that early on and realised that – after Mickery had had a certain number of distinguished anni­versaries – the theatre that actually shaped Mickery would not be around for­ ever. And that that theatre was profoundly of the moment in the very best sense of what the very best theatre is able to do. And that it wouldn’t have a legacy that would take a form of a kind of canon and body of work and that the site itself should not be venerated. I think Ritsaert’s sense of atomising the Mickery into a series of imagined arcs of human connection that could be sustained and elaborated through a combination of aleatoric – and then sud-

denly fiercely committed and passionate – friendship was really the way to go. In one sense I feel that I missed the party and that I arrived just as the party was moving on. But also in the years that I got to know Ritsaert, Ritsaert was moving and working in all of these other undercover ways. I do deeply, deeply respect the sense that what that generation was not about was institution building. And that Ritsaert’s attempt, if an institution was called for, would be not the Mickery but DasArts. And he really did feel that the place for an institution was educational. In fact the work itself of Mickery resisted institutionalisation. Which was very wonderful and generous and selfless on his part, because there were more than enough people who wanted the Mickery to continue to represent something. And Ritsaert sensed that that time was over and that the world was moving in different directions. He became aware of another side of RtC that fewer people saw – ‘The very, very profound depressions where Ritsaert really shut down and went into deep retreat.’ Both things needed to happen: there needed to be magical, free-floating space, which was again primarily an emotional, spiritual entity rather than an object or a location, and then there also needed to be the idea – ‘Okay we’re going to go away for a little while and disappear.’ And that disappearance was actually a really important part in sustaining the work.

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In 1990 RtC attended the Los Angeles Festival in which the Western avantgarde was set alongside expressions of popular culture and traditional performative activities from the Pacific rim. He ‘drank it in deeply’. …to have somebody of his imagination and inclination there responding; and clearly this would result in something…He wasn’t just there as a consumer but he was there as interlocutor, as a collaborator, and as someone then who would go and create his own response. He could see both the social and political possibilities and of course just the sheer artistic pleasure, and layers of pleasure, that were involved… RtC’s immediate response to the fusion of indigenous and avant-garde practices dispersed in communities throughout a democratised civic

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space and an energy that called to mind Mickery’s past achievements, would be, first, the Touch Time Festival (1991), in the heart of the city; and then DasArts. And of Mickery? Ritsaert understood it as [noh theatre actor and playwright] Zeami would – the sense that it’s a flower, it blooms for its moment, and then it stops. And there will be other flowers later but this flower has its moment. And the sense that theatre is existing on that edge like a flower, and that it’s radiant for a moment but you can’t preserve it. You actually have to preserve it in memory but not as an artefact. And of course it will re-root and it will flower in another generation. But it took a form that it can never take again.

29 A research project

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Eva Diegritz. 1989. ‘Mickery’ in Performing Europe: Dokumentation/ Dokumentation. Internationales Sommertheater Festival Kampnagel: Hamburg, 23–41. In 1989, as part of a ‘stocktaking’ of the institutions that had appeared within the ‘independent’ scene, the Sommertheater Festival – based at Kampnagel, a former crane factory in Hamburg – completed an investigation of the working methods and artistic objectives of seven European arts centres, including Centro Inteatro (Polverigi, Italy), Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona, Spain), Chapter (Cardiff, Wales) and Mickery. Young German observers spent several weeks in each location. Eva Diegritz came to Amsterdam. She catches Mickery in its final phase, the building in Rozengracht now given over to Frau Holle: there is already a taking of stock. As Diegritz relates the story of Mickery from its origins in Loenersloot, there is a sense of historicity at work: of a certain past being tidied up, cut into distinct periods and purposeful phases, in retrospect, by her correspondents. The programme in the early 1970s when ‘artists from all over the world were invited to demonstrate the latest developments with their body, text, music and space, as well as political and visual theatre’, is referred to as ‘Landscape’. Of modes of production, she identifies three forms:

1. Mickery provides a group with a room and technical facilities for a 138

production.

with one individual or several theatre people. This means that he plans the performance and leaves the direction to someone else. 3. Ritsaert ten Cate directs personally. Of presentational format, she notes three options: [1] Different, simultaneous performances on one evening which are nevertheless to be seen as a whole. [2] The division of the audience into groups who experience different things. [3] Or several pieces over a longer period which are presented within a more or less loose framework. The ‘Even Kijken’ series (1981), for example, showed one-act pieces in different combinations for eight weeks. The audience had to make a choice of two pieces every evening. Altogether, eighteen combinations were possible.

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She traces a trajectory in Mickery’s own productions – and their on-going concern to examine ‘the relationships between the audience, the perform-

Mickery, Sweet Dreams, 1982

2. Ritsaert ten Cate realises productions in close artistic cooperation

ers and the room’ – from Fairground with its mobile containers, through ‘Manipulating audiences’ to ‘Making theatre beyond television’, and thence to major co-production and promotion. And she combines retrospective reflections with programmatic statements of intent from the archives that now help orientate and inform critical assessment of past productions. Reiterating Mickery’s ‘basic viewpoints’ – ‘the organical [sic] growth of an emerging philosophy’ – as part of the subsequent ‘Cotillon’ concept, RtC writes:

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a. In all projects one would find a designed space. Architecture as the decisive factor in shaping the interactions between the various individuals and groups involved in a theatrical event. b. All projects included an investigation of presentational structure. Attempts were made to make the variety of individual experiences of a performance both visible and tangible. c. For some time the selection and method of organizing performances were given the heading ‘Studies in Manipulation’. ‘Manipulation’ being a crucial element in everyday social intercourse, it also became a nuclear concept in the theatre, in the sense that an attempt was made to shape a theatrical method of visible thinking, reflecting developments in our daily environment. d. In all cases the presence and impact of the media – television in particular – on our daily life proved to be a subject for (a) theatrical research. e. Finally, the Mickery’s insistence that every one of its specific projects be the occasion to set up a co-operation, or confrontation, between theatre makers from Holland and from abroad, whose capacities seemed best to fit each project’s specific requirements, in order to provoke the ‘ideal chemical reaction’. (33) He goes on to elaborate his principles of research, and its significance not only in developing new theatre practices but also in revealing modes of intercourse that might be transferred to and impact upon civic society:

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I should add that all five aspects listed [above] involved a measure of theatrical research. Research which presupposes an audience in order to continually test its basic assumptions and coherence in practice. Research which also involves attempts at developing new theatrical rules in addition to those recognized up to now. Attempts to extend the notion of theatre as an art form beyond its traditional limits in order to arrive at a linguistics still recognizably theatrical and capable of being so labelled,

but covering aspects of social life not included in the scope of art defined as an exchange of creative enjoyment between ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’. That is, (re-)introducing forms of communication derived from the theatre into the domain of everyday, political, social, economical reality – the domain where people manipulate, and are manipulated by, others instead of watching a playwright pulling the strings of puppets on a stage (33). In anticipation of ‘Making theatre beyond television’, RtC had proposed: This will consist of designing and producing events in which the audience forms an integral part of the project. This integration also includes the presence of television. In the past as well as in our current interpretation, both formed essential elements within the structure of projects for which the building itself primarily constituted the environment (whether adjusted or not) and the setting. ‘Beyond television’ aims at pursuing and studying theatrical objectives.

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He foresees hybrid forms – interpenetrations of live and mediated ma­ terial – in which aspects of the broadcast medium, television, and our attitudes to it, rather than the simple inclusion of video, infuse the dramaturgical mix. The presence of television is utilized to reach beyond the theatre audience, but it would be missing the point to see nothing more than a shift to a medium more rewarding in terms of public attention. Neither medium is to become a substitute for the other. Of course television may serve as a recording device producing results which, in terms of theatrical research, may be referred to as side products. If the medium, however, incorporated in the dramaturgically designed structure of a theatrical event functions in its own right, it will also produce its own unique interpretation: not a mere recording of a piece or a documentary of a working process, but an organic expression of having been present – organic in the sense of explicating the possibilities inherent in the medium. In this case the result is no longer a side product. (34) As Diegritz researches, Mickery is in its last throes, the closure of the theatre characterised here as a political spat, giving ‘vent to its displeasure at the prevailing culture policies’.

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But RtC still has plans – ‘For the next three years we intend to expand our efforts to find new and challenging counterparts to further our experiences with the collaborative process.’ In September 1989 Mickery stages Brith Gof’s Gododdin in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in collaboration with rock promoters NL Centrum. This Chapter production is also presented in Polverigi and in Hamburg. Mickery will barely last the three years.

30 The producers a Hugo de Greef (Founder and director Kaaitheater, Brussels, 1977–97; since 2007, general director, Flagey Art Center) Conversation: 14 December 2008, Brussels It was at Mickery in 1980 that he first saw The Performance Group – shortly to be The Wooster Group – perform with Point Judith (1980).

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I still remember that I was walking in Rozengracht, I don’t know to where, and just realising slowly in my head what an important performance I had just experienced.

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It was the beginning of two relationships: RtC would become a partner in programming international work; and The Wooster Group a regular visitor to Kaaitheater, to Brussels, and elsewhere – he would become their chief advocate in Europe. Mickery – ‘always seen as the place for the international avant-garde’, and which he knew as much through Mickery Mouth and its reports on projects as first-hand – and the Nancy Festival would be his initial inspirations. His principal task was to convince RtC that a new generation of Belgian artists could be regarded as both international and avant-garde – ‘In our opinion “Yes”.’ In 1981, he persuaded RtC to travel to the small town of Waregem in Belgium to see Jan Fabre’s second performance, presented for one night only as part of the Kaaitheater Festival programme; Kaaitheater existed as a festival until 1985 before occupying a number of venues and finally settling in a permanent home in 1992. ‘So he went.’ Commencing at midnight, the performance lasted eight hours. Mickery would subsequently co-produce Fabre’s work and that of Jan Lauwers’s Needcompany. The search was then on to find further European co-producers – venue and festival directors – the core of which developed into an extremely influential group including Tom Stromberg at Theater-am-Turm in Frankfurt and Nele Hertling at Hebbel-Theater in Berlin; Weiner Festwochen in Vienna, and others. They would become influential figures in the Informal

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Jan Fabre: Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorizien was, 1983

European Theatre Meetings (ietm), a sprawling organisation of companies and promoters. They would enhance understanding of practices they favoured through the journal Theaterschrift. Whilst the ‘Flemish wave’ of artists found ‘totally new ways of defining forms to bring their ideas towards the public’, the early years were not easy. They would wait for the first audience members to get up and leave; there were ‘even fights in the hall’. When Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker performed in Paris, the audience walked out in droves – ‘By the end we thought we would be alone.’ The only option for the promoter was to present her work again, as he himself did with The Wooster Group in Brussels after similar responses. The aim: to educate an audience. Eventual success was based on a convergence of three factors: the artists themselves; the contexts within which their work was shown again and again; and co-production – finding European partners to sponsor specific productions, those festivals and arts centres who were trying to create an identity through affiliation with an exciting movement. Committed to supporting a particular stable of artists, these producers underwrote the financial risks, sought substantial funding, and made increasingly expensive performances possible. By the mid-1990s a combination of six European partners could support The Wooster Group to work for a period of two years in the usa rather than sponsoring a particular performance. It was ‘an amazing system’, of its time, unrepeatable… He regrets the lack of academic study of programming: ‘If you really work in a cultural and art context, programming is setting out lines over years, pursuing them through the performances you can present.’ RtC

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was, he thinks, an extreme example of this; it is essential in understanding the work at Mickery. RtC had to have a personal reason to mount work; it was never simply an agreement to programme because others did. And one thing he learned – ‘I have to like the work and the artist.’ ‘Mickery’ he concludes ‘is like an artwork of Ritsaert ten Cate, one piece of art.’ His own productions have to be seen as elements in that long durational performance – ‘It was totally logical that it stopped when Ritsaert stopped’; ‘If you don’t have Ritsaert, you don’t have it any more.’

b Tom Stromberg (Theatre producer and director of Theatre Festival Impulse; former artistic director of Theater-am-Turm, Frankfurt) Conversation: 11 September 2009, Frankfurt (by telephone) The story of his arrival at Mickery is near legendary in that theatre world. How he and his girlfriend had decided to take a trip to Amsterdam with two small children because the weather was so nice; how they thought it would be fun to travel by road from Frankfurt; how they had become stuck in a traffic jam for seven or eight hours. By the time they reached Amsterdam one of the children was already vomiting in the car. They couldn’t find a hotel, they couldn’t park – ‘It was a disaster.’ Finally they found an expensive suite. Needing to escape for an hour from the heat and smell of the room, he went for a walk. Close by, he found a theatre. Above the door, the words ‘Need to Know’.

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So I went into the theatre. Bought a ticket. I fell completely in love with Needcompany. After the show I went to the director. I invited everybody to Frankfurt. I met Ritsaert and that’s the story.

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Thus were established relationships that would eventually lead to the development of practices of co-production with Hugo de Greef and others, and to the emergence of the so-called ‘mafia’ of influential European promoters. It was at the Theater der Welt in Frankfurt in 1985 that he first became aware of the new Flemish scene – ‘In that festival I saw Rosas, Fabre and Lauwers and I was very impressed by it, but it didn’t have an effect on my theatre work at that time.’ During 1986–7, he ran Theater-am-Turm (tat) in Frankfurt along conventional lines, ‘with normal German theatre people.’ After the encounters in Amsterdam: ‘I started to completely reorganise the house and made it into an international theatre partner.’ What impressed him at Mickery was ‘the openness of the house, the

He was there and was always around me. And I thought, ‘Why is this guy coming here, he knows some of the productions? Why is he here all the time?’ And it was quite clear he wanted to check me out: how I do this festival, how I work with artists, how I behave with audiences. […] He checked me out to be part of the mafia or not. And from that moment on, he became my mentor. It was his authority. It was his incredibly clear view of good and bad theatre, even if we were not always of the same opinion of course, and with many different ideas. He described for me theatre very wonderfully. And of course I was on the way also with other artists in Germany – to start on working that theatre has not to stay as theatre; and to work with visual artists, and film artists and so on. And Ritsaert was one of the people who acted perfectly as an advisor in all these things.

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He came late to Rozengracht; it was 1987. He remembers it as a small theatre, a black box of a kind by that time familiar – ‘a normal avant-garde theatre’. Its flexibility was echoed in tat – ‘We could move the audience wherever we wanted.’ But the sustained engagement proved inspirational

Needcompany, Julius Caesar, 1990

openness of the director of the house [who] was an idol for me.’ Later, during a small festival he organised, RtC came to Frankfurt – ‘And I was wondering why he came; he came for many days.’

– ‘The audience in Mickery was very well trained.’ In Frankfurt the first performances of Needcompany were attended by only 30 or 40 people. He persevered: We made a long…We invited the company two, three times with the same play or with a new play, again and again. And tell the people that’s the only thing you should see. And after a while it worked. And he learned to have resilience: presenting unfamiliar, challenging, controversial work, in the knowledge that in RtC, ‘I have a partner and a friend I can trust one hundred percent in giving me the energy and the power to survive these difficulties…’ What was impossible to replicate was RtC’s direct engagement with artists.

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One of the most difficult questions in making theatre, if you are not an artist – I mean Ritsaert later on became an artist, maybe he was always an artist – but as a director of a theatre, is always to deal with the artist: how can you give him advice. Some of the artists are completely resistant to any advice. People like Jan Fabre – you would have to kill them before they will listen to you. But Ritsaert was able to talk to artists on the same high level: to talk to them, to convince them, and in some way to change direction. And that was very, very impressive. I mean Jan Lauwers, when Ritsaert came out of rehearsal, out of a performance, was shaking, of knowing what Ritsaert was thinking about his performance. He was hungry for advice, to change things, to make them better. But their personal friendship – enhanced whilst RtC was rehearsing for two months in tat as a performer in Needcompany’s Antonius and Cleopatra – came only after the closure of Mickery – ‘a very hard moment’ – and the growth of a European circuit, albeit an exclusive one that represented the long-term aspirations of Mickery writ large.

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The only chance to bring some of the artists to Europe, or to tour them, or to give them a chance to have performances in several venues – like Reza Abdoh – was because there was this circuit of venues between Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam and so on – the mafia. It was a joke, but some people thought that if an artist is in that circle…For the artist, he was in a high-class, avant-garde tournée.

In conclusion, we agree that RtC’s real significance was as a mentor and producer – ‘I try to find the right words…he was a man of honour.’ In my whole life I didn’t make any decision about theatre without visiting him before and asking. We had a very close relationship in these things. He would be amongst RtC’s last visitors. We left the boat – me, and Lauwers two days after me – crying. And Ritsaert said, ‘It’s strange. Everyone who is leaving this boat is crying. It has something to do with the boat I think.’ This was the last sentence I heard from Ritsaert. There is silence on the telephone line. ‘Are you still there?’ I ask. ‘I’m standing in front of a photo of Ritsaert, smoking a cigarette’, he replies. ‘Do you know the portraits he made – Rembrandt and himself? In one face.’

31 A workbook

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Brith Gof/Test Dept. 1989. Gododdin – Leeuwarden, The Workbook. Most of the plastic teeth on the white spiral binding of the A4 document are now broken, through age and usage; the cover photograph shows an empty ice stadium, the Fryslanhal in Leeuwarden. It is a complete set of instructions for how to create the scenography for Gododdin, the large-scale site-specific performance project by Welsh theatre company Brith Gof and London-based industrial percussionists Test Dept. First presented in the disused Rover car factory in Cardiff, uk, in December 1988 as a Chapter production, Gododdin was restaged several times during the summer of 1989 in key contexts within the emergent ­European circuit of festivals and producers – at Inteatro, Polverigi, Italy; Internationales Sommertheater-Festival, Kampnagel, Hamburg; and Tram­way, Glasgow. In Leeuwarden it was produced by Mickery in collaboration with rock music promoters nl Centrum and performed on 31 August and 1–2 September 1989. It marks the final phase of Mickery’s ambitions to seek out new audiences: here, by locating work outside Amsterdam. It demonstrates the considerable expertise of Mickery in making manifest complex scenographic designs that included ten cars, dozens of trees, hundreds of tons of sand and thousands of gallons of water. The demands on Mickery’s travelling technical team, working in an unfamiliar location, were substantial: the trees came by road from Germany.

147

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Brith Gof, Gododdin, Leeuwarden, 1989

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Gododdin is the oldest surviving poem in Welsh. It is an elegy for fallen warriors, relating a battle between a combination of Welsh and Scots against the invading English around 600 AD. Created at the time of a Conservative government, intent upon dismantling British heavy industry, its initial staging in a disused factory proposed military defeat as a metaphor for industrial decline. Ironically, it was a substantial grant – reflecting Margaret Thatcher’s response to her growing paranoia at French cultural hegemony in Europe – that supported further stagings of a costly

production. The total budget in Leeuwarden would be fl. 206,597 [approximately £80,000]. Theatre production had become big business: at the limits of feasibility, and of prudence. The Workbook contains ‘a complete breakdown, element by element, of the work that will need to be done, with technical specifications, descriptions and quantities’; and a draft timetable – ‘These notes and diagrams contain all the necessary information for our technical and building crews to make Gododdin.’ In Leeuwarden, the scenography designed by the late Cliff McLucas fills the stadium. A grid of 80 evenly-spaced coniferous trees – nine metres high, tied to roof beams and sitting on the concrete floor – occupies the interior, the branches just above head height – ‘It may be possible to sell the timber after performances, perhaps to make a profit!’ Each tree has a single 100-watt light bulb in its foliage. There is a landscape of low hills – created from eight thousand heaped sandbags – to which the audience retreat as the stadium fills with water: ‘In publicity and on tickets etc, it may be necessary to ensure that members of the audience wear suitable footwear to the performance (stout waterproof shoes and definitely no high heeled shoes!).’ This setting echoes the topography of Friesland in which villages sit on man-made islands or terpen. Lighting is provided from centrally located scaffolding towers and from the headlights of scrap cars: ‘THEY WILL NOT GO BACK TO THEIR OWNERS IN THE SAME CONDITION IN WHICH THEY ARRIVE!’ Water pours into the performance, from above, throughout its duration: ‘It will be necessary to use water supplies used by the fire services.’ .

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The objective is to get as large a volume of water into the space in as short a time as possible, and alter the environment as much as possible – the area should become a ‘lake’. In the prologue section, musicians enter, pulled around the flooded moat on a wagon in the form of a large wooden swan, built by local artists The Four Evangelists at the invitation of Mickery. But the large oil drums requested by the drummers are unavailable here. Instead the technical team provides stainless steel milk vats from local dairies; played with soft mallets they create deep and menacing booms. In stark black and white photographs, we appear tense and nervous. Bare-chested and dressed in kilts, we stalk the space. In Mickery Pictorial II (1991, 423–5) we hang in the climbing nets in the spray of high-pressure hoses. ‘The performers will get extremely exhausted, dirty and cold during the performance’ the Workbook warns. Ultimately, the sheer size of the hall defeats us. We spend a good deal of

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the performance simply running. On the second night as we finish, blood appears to be streaming from someone’s nose, then disconcertingly from all our noses. On examination, it is revealed to be soot; everyone is black and grimy. Someone has substituted diesel fuel for paraffin in the many naked oil lamps to create better flames, and a cloud of thick black smoke now hangs in the stadium. Performance close to ecological disaster, but also incredibly portentous and ill-omened – a gathering gloom. Fifteen hundred spectators appear each night, and rock fans from Amsterdam mingle with local inhabitants. A reviewer from the uk rock magazine Sounds (16 September 1989) calls Goddodin ‘a lament for a nation’s pride, whether it be that of Friesland, Wales, or the show’s next destination, Scotland’. The cultural resonances are tenuous here, however. A female Frisian speaker does contribute to the prologue, joining Welsh in an elision of minority languages. But this is an agricultural community far removed from the industrial decline in Thatcher’s Britain, and its social implications. Kilted warriors have few local connotations. Claims for separate national recognition here are insubstantial; in Glasgow it will be different. In Leeuwarden, Gododdin is more watery circus than ‘a nation’s saving grace’. Mickery’s foray into the rural hinterland will not be repeated. Within eighteen months the Touch Time Festival will be centred upon Leidseplein, in Amsterdam’s city centre. To the end, Mickery’s identity and concerns are primarily metropolitan.

32 Jan Zoet

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(Dramaturg and artistic coordinator at Mickery, 1985–91; since 1999 managing director of Rotterdamse Schouwburg) Conversation: 13 December 2008, Rotterdam As we sit in his theatre – the Rotterdam Schouwburg (City Theatre) – the talk is of beginnings, reinventions, and endings. It starts for him in 1984. As a student in provincial Leiden, it was Jac Heijer, teaching a course on writing criticism, who advised him to go to Mickery. Seeking voluntary work there, his first task was to replace the hinges on all the doors. I was not aware of the holiness or the mythical aura Ritsaert and Mickery had in the big part of the artistic world. I just came there and liked the work and Ritsaert was intriguing. I wanted to learn a lot. 150

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Mickery: Kidnap, 1985

The first production he worked on was Kidnap (1985), directed by Geraldine Pilgrim. From 1985 until Mickery’s closure, he was dramaturg and artistic coordinator, in effect RtC’s personal assistant – ‘One of the most exciting jobs I could imagine.’ His first major project was Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985) – ‘Rembrandt was [for RtC] a personal, personal project.’ And its gestation was long. Each phase of rehearsal was presaged by the introduction of another A3 book of pictures – photocopies of photographs and artworks – and the texts that RtC continued to write during the process. It was with some difficulty that RtC attempted to explain and to enact theatrically the fusion of biographical themes, world events and his on-going personal concerns. Downstairs, the mute statues of Chinese warriors were juxtaposed with texts from the gravediggers’ scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, RtC’s firsthand account of witnessing German bombardment and memories of Schumann. In the Bovenzaal, as the audience gradually moved forward to see what was happening below through the glass screen, an American actor delivered an anonymous text on conspiracy. This paranoid document that imagined secrets and potential threats everywhere had been discovered blowing around the streets in downtown Manhattan and published in Harper’s Magazine. As they first entered, the audience passed between two standing naked figures, referencing Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s performance Imponderabilia (1977). Everything came from RtC. He was ‘vulnerable on the one hand and yet he was like the manager, managing it all’.

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It started in his mind, in his books – all these references he was putting on the table – and he was giving bits and pieces to people. And only in the end, when the whole thing was there and the simultaneous parallel worlds started to work on each other, have interaction, then people found out there was something very special happening.

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This ‘piling up of images, texts’ resulted in a baroque richness and layering unlike anything else in contemporary theatre and paralleled only, he conjectures, in the films and installations of Peter Greenaway – ‘They don’t make them anymore and they’d never made them before.’ Only slowly were deeper meanings acknowledged by audiences – ‘When people came out they could not say anything of what they had seen, but they were touched and moved, or puzzled and confused.’ But, he muses, RtC never became quite the director he wanted to be; his skill was in ‘choosing the right collaborators and in communicating’. At the culmination of the two extended projects – manipulating audiences and theatre beyond television – media provided both form and content: Vespers (1986) was really about television. The sourcing and inclusion of the thirty-minute video of Omayra Sanchez – up to her neck in ooze for two days before dying of a heart attack in the Colombian mudslide of 1985 and talking directly to camera – as the music of Philip Glass played beneath was ‘like a memorial but at the same time commenting what television is about’, demonstrating its power, and the inherent danger of reducing such an event to a ten-second news clip. But RtC was increasingly troubled by the increasingly economic preoccupations of the scene. He reflects on the attitudes current: Theatre might as well close its doors, because it is only determined by governments and ministries who give subsidies in order to create big audiences; and people are not interested any more in content and theatre loses its meaning as, [...] as Ritsaert called it, an ‘act in time’. Every theatrical or act should have a meaning in the context of its time and society where it is part of…and commenting on, or reflecting upon, or provoking…

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So in 1988 a plan was formulated to close Mickery, and reopen it again as a club, a ‘phenomenon of the period that drew new young audiences into new spaces’, that seemed to be ‘the next phase in the development of culture and art’. The concept was to present performances that segued seamlessly into nightlife and dancing. Simultaneously, American director Charles Atlas would make a feature film with a script by cyber-punk writ-

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er John Shirley as ‘a statement on where theatre was heading’. In preparation, he went to New York to experience the club scene and to find artists. The club – ‘Mickery Incognito’ – never happened, but the impulse to occupy or create new kinds of social space as location for theatre was pursued in the staging of Science Research Laboratories’ A Plan for Social Improvement (1988) in an area housing squatters and due for demolition; in Brith Gof’s Gododdin in Friesland (1989); and in Hess Is Dood (Hess Is Dead) (1989) scripted by Howard Brenton and presented in an upper room in De Waag, Amsterdam’s medieval castle. In the final seven years, RtC was ‘trying to bring together his visual artist’s background with a need to tell a story and to make statements about what he thought important to make a statement about as an artist’. But he was becoming more and more pessimistic about the role and function of theatre, or at least a certain formulation of the dramatic impulse – Frau Holle was more a statement than a vibrant reality in stimulating new modes of production. Although production activity continued in Rozengracht between 1988–90 – from Station House Opera’s Cuckoo (1989) to Love Theatre’s She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife (1990) – Mickery ends in 1992. With the prospect of a new funding round, a decision was made to stop with the Touch Time Festival (1991). He was responsible for Touch tv Time, producing one hour of broadcast quality footage per day in a studio in the old building, thirty minutes of which were shot by festival artists themselves, who were given a camera for the day. The first steps in Loenersloot – as cameras look at If There Weren’t Any Blacks…– linked to the last. He concludes by reflecting on the influence of Mickery: Its history was absolutely important for many artists, and the climate and the networks that came out of Mickery, or via Mickery into existence, for performing arts – of producers, of artists, of touring circuits; and that it was picked up by the media. It was partly due to Mickery that a Dutch theatre of quality and international appeal emerged in the 1980s; it was thanks to Mickery that an international scene was cultivated – ‘A world where you could meet fellow travellers.’ ‘Our theatre landscape has been inspired or broadened or widened or become better in a way.’ And in this, RtC’s ways of operating were the key: Being so much himself...Always provoking, asking the right questions. Never going along with the fight, but against it. In a

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very charming way, being very rude to officials and the hypocrisy of governments or city councils. That also inspired others. And also his need for constant reinvention – ‘Getting the theatre into something more than an art-form.’

33 A magazine Four issues of Two and Two: Quarterly sketches for a theatrical landscape. Issue Zero, July 1985; Volume 1, Issue 2, February 1989; Volume 1, Issue 3, April 1989; Volume 1, Special Issue, Spring 1989. Two and Two is a Mickery Readable, published quarterly by the Stichting Mickery Workshop, Amsterdam. News stand rate: fl 10. Issue Zero (July 1985) is a folded broadsheet, edited by RtC and John Ashford, director of the dance venue The Place in London who writes the editorial:

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Why ‘Two and two’? Because when you stumble across a new realisation, it’s only through having put two and two together. Take two known notions from one area of experience; pitch them against two notions from another area of experience; and the result will hopefully not only modify both areas, but also lead on to the unknown. In this the first issue, we put two articles from the uk together and two from the us (cover).

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Ashford identifies ‘invisible lines of congruence and dissonance’ in the articles, making them of ‘greater significance together than apart’. From the UK, John McGrath, director of the political theatre company 7:84 that first appeared at Mickery in 1975 with Lay Off explores the benefits of institutionalisation, whilst in ‘Against Slowness’, David Gale co-founder of Lumière & Son, rails against slowness and its ‘charmless cousin’ repetition, as they infect contemporary performance. Richard Foreman – responding to changed political circumstances in the usa and in support of new theatrical aesthetics – proposes: ‘An end to justification. Celebrate the terrible and unavoidable paradoxes with disruptive energy.’ And Gary Willis reflects upon Nancy Reagan, failed Hollywood actress: on her ‘severe economy of expression’ and cultivation of The Look. The production values are high. The edition is interleaved with reproductions of seventeenth century etchings, on tracing paper. In future is-

Now that rock performance and video have extended the bounds of theatre within popular culture; now that Mrs. Thatcher’s failing popularity is accredited by the Conservatives to a failure of ‘presentation’ of policies, rather than to the unpopularity of the policies themselves; now that there is an actor and actress in the White House; so, just as an anthropologist might make a useful study of the ritual significance of theatre within a society, we must use a specialised knowledge of theatre to better understand our world. (Ashford, 1)

Squat Theatre, ‘L’ Train, 1989

sues, it is intended to commission new artworks, ‘self-sufficient and provocative within a broad understanding of theatre, not as a mere adjunct to the detail of the text.’ In sum, it acknowledges a need for those involved in theatre ‘to speak together across cultural and national borders.’

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Two and Two appears in a period of uncertainty and change, in both politics and theatre; the accompanying letter to potential subscribers signals debate, ‘about directions in theatre, or the absence of it.’ As a vehicle of broad dissemination, the journal intends to both reflect and stimulate the scene.

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In this moment, new companies with different aesthetic priorities are appearing – Impact Theatre Cooperative from the UK with The Carrier Frequency (1985), performed in paralanguage on a stage setting ankle-deep in water; and in an embryonic expression of the ‘Flemish wave’, Epigonen Theatre with Incident (1985), its performers constantly avoiding a huge swinging punch-bag. In our conversation, Jan Lauwers acknowledges the journal’s subsequent influence in reporting upon work he would never see live. But the print format is unsustainable. Subsequent issues are in a more realistic A4 size, on cream paper, but the aim to bring two notions together sustains. The interim is long. In 1989, the cover of Volume 1, Issue 2 – edited now by long-time Pip Simmons actor Roderic Leigh and former Theatre X managing director Colleen Scott – bears words by William Goldman: ‘The single most important fact of the entire movie industry – nobody knows anything.’ In ‘Film making in Britain: myth vs reality’, eminent director Chris Petit regrets the growing influence of television: ‘Our cinema has become little more than the hardback version of television.’ Mike Figgis – whose recording of Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985) RtC called ‘one of many possible versions’ – describes his experience of seeking a deal in Hollywood. Later, Figgis will make Internal Affairs (1990), Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Timecode (2000), and become a champion of new technology in the industry. In an article wittily entitled ‘If there weren’t any monitors we’d have to invent them’, RtC elaborates the role of video from the very time of Mickery’s inception. And he acknowledges the success of the ‘Making theatre beyond television’ project, notably in the generation of products ‘shared with a wider audience’, in continuance of an original ambition of the live productions: to begin a discussion. In the ‘What’s coming up’ column: ‘...both Two and Two and Frau Holle took their first tottering steps towards independence in this mad, mad world.’ As the house magazine of Mickery, there is much to read in coded messages, between the lines. Volume 1, Special Issue is entirely in Russian, and distributed free. It contains articles drawn from the first three issues. It is distributed at the meeting of the nascent Informal European Theatre Meeting (ietm) in Salzburg, to help clarify for Russian and Eastern European guests ‘the framework within which those of us in the West work.’ There are contributions from expatriate companies, ‘who know what exile means, although they can now visit their countries’ – Squat from Hungary, Osmego Dnia from Poland. And from Russians Anatoly Vasiliev – whose Cerceau with the Moscow-based School of Dramatic Art was staged by Mickery in 1987 – and Taganka Theatre founder Yuri Lyubimov, in exile after being stripped of

Soviet citizenship in 1984. How prescient that this issue should appear in 1989, with fundamental transformations already afoot in the East? Putting two and two together does not untangle complex issues or predicaments, but it does help keep alive an awareness of how much work and energy must be spent to keep the focus on what’s really important. Perhaps this special Russian edition of Two and Two can begin to symbolise this awareness. But Mickery is ever realistic. Volume 1, Issue 3 is dedicated to discussion of subsidy and business and markets. Jean-Pierre Thibaudat maps the inexorable rise of Jack Lang from the directorship of the World Theatre Festival in Nancy – busy ‘discovering’ Kantor, Grotowski, Bread and Puppet Theatre, Squat and oppressed artists the world over – to government post and ubiquity. Here is a glimpse of a theatre-world suddenly enthralled in buying and selling, and the hyperinflation of artistic value that surely awaits its own ‘Black Wednesday’ meltdown. RtC remains both critical and utopian in outlook, reasserting the value of cultural exchange in a society actively seeking inspiration: …it has its foundation in a strong conviction that the way to a rich life goes beyond the scope of possessive ownership, prestige, standing, power, and has more to do with the encouraging projects, people, and the arts to live lives of their own, sharing differences with us. The standardisation and homogenised product just won’t work. European culture requires ‘intensive care’. (12)

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And ‘What’s coming up’ welcomes readers to Mickery’s ‘moveable feast’ – ‘Mickery projects are taking place in The Hague, in Amsterdam, in Frankfurt, and Brussels.’

34 Marijke Hoogenboom (Professor at the Amsterdam School of the Arts, head of the Art Practice and Development research group; trainee and line-producer at Mickery; with RtC one of the architects of DasArts and the school’s dramaturg until 2001) Conversation: 15 December 2008, Amsterdam Her talk is of an experience mainly at second-hand, through involvement in visions and obsessions translated to, and fulfilled within, another context – DasArts.

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As a student in Germany, she knew nothing of Mickery; its primary effects were highly localised. Her contact came very late. But continuing her studies in Amsterdam in 1988, she answered a note pinned to the university notice board, for a job to ‘guard and guide’ Mickery’s video archive housed at Frau Holle. Once in the post, her task was to sort the large collection and to make it accessible. But Frau Holle as a concept – as a workplace/ meeting place offering technical facilities, space and information to new initiatives in theatre and visual and video arts – was not functioning as intended, even with substantial financial and advisory support. Too few people were working (apart from companies such as Amsterdam-based Suver Nuver, whose three leaders came from Friesland). There was little sense of community – ‘Nobody had really asked for that space, that opportunity. In a way it was always empty there.’ Whilst surrendering the building on Rozengracht, there was still an ideological claim on what it should be, in ideal terms. The technicians were still there; they had been in huge demand during the period of constant transformation, ‘of how to exhaust the building’. But new occupants had no such ambitions for the building, no plans for extended architectural enquiry. They simply required clean ‘black box’ spaces suitable to pursue practices less architecturally demanding in nature. Mickery literally became a price list, and the essential relationship between producer, company and site, and of artistic negotiation leading to performance was lost. The main income came from renting the theatre for weddings and parties – ‘It became a strange kind of double goal because it had to make some money but it wasn’t coming from an artistic community that was in need of a space.’ The venue had become a burden: it could not afford to be empty. In the changing economic circumstances of the late 1980s, it needed a continuous programme; it needed paying guests. And whilst waiting for ‘customers’, she watched all the tapes ‘out of curiosity, out of boredom’. It was an education. RtC was no longer there: ‘not as a person, even not really as a story’. Mickery had moved into small offices in Herenmarkt once occupied by Jan Kassies’s Institute for Theatre Research; the move consciously situated Mickery within that tradition. Contact with Frau Holle was slight. But suddenly at a press conference in Rozengracht – ‘There he was’ – a man and a mode of communication that could swiftly fill the building. Mickery’s production activities were now dispersed. History of Theatre (Part II) (1989) was staged in a former assembly hall in the Rotterdam waterworks, drawing together different practices into one format – ‘a kind of repertoire that wasn’t’. It evoked History of Theatre presented by the Argentinian company Grupo Tse in 1972 in the transition programme in Noorderkerk. But the overriding experience here was one of spatial disorientation – ‘You really lost the sense of what is right, what is left, what is

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History of Theatre (Part ii) is about theatre that, per se, is not perfect. Hindered by the noise from next-door, endlessly searching for a moment of perfection that, once found, never will come back. Theatre that shows the unpainted backsides of its sets. That tries to find its strength in its vulnerability; that tries to survive amidst a culture that anxiously is holding on to the smoothness and easy accessibility of mass media. (Jan Zoet in Diegritz 1989, 32) Dispersed internationally too. Back in Germany, at the Internationales Sommertheater-Festival at Kampnagel in Hamburg in 1989, she would work on productions that included Mickery’s contribution to the programme – Noel Harding’s Enclosure for a conventional habit, an installation in which white chickens walked on a slow moving conveyor belt. And in the city also. The ‘Back 2 Back’ programme (1989) at Frascati Theatre – every night two controversial performances staged ‘back to back’ –

Drawing Legion/Mickery, American Nervousness, 1989

front, what is back.’ In a space that had ‘no borders, no dimensions’, the audience knew only the three walls of its own hovercraft box, ‘and that box was constantly moving’ – ‘I had no idea what I was seeing.’ The juxtaposition of boxes opened upon scenes communally experienced, and closed in on ‘almost puppeteer situations’.

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located Mickery’s activities more centrally in Amsterdam. And when the Touch Time Festival squatted the city centre in 1991, the building in Rozengracht had little function – ‘neither venue nor lounge nor festival centre’ – serving simply as a rehearsal space for works transferred to other venues. ‘It was really gone.’ It was as assistant to RtC at DasArts – the post-graduate school founded in 1993 for which he was invited by the Ministry of Education to create the curriculum – that she witnessed something of his administrative and creative methods. Mickery would be a defining if haunting presence: a history and set of experiences constantly drawn and built upon, its ways of operating transferred. It provided ‘a living heritage’ that RtC still felt attached to. He conceived and composed the pedagogical structure visually as a series of ‘blocks’, as ‘a kind of ground-plan, floor plan’, drawing out sequences of thematic semesters and lists of potential teachers, in which names from Mickery’s history return – Howard Brenton, Mike Figgis, Stuart Sherman. He also produced a book of photocopied collages – clippings from the Ikea catalogue, The New Yorker, advertisements for paint-ball gaming – imaging the programme ‘from the basics up’: ‘This is it what I’m working on.’ And if he was an architect, he was an architect who liked ‘to juggle with bricks’, without ever fully completing the project. He would refer to things tried before, in another time and place, pointing her to structures of exposition rather than content, and providing original Mickery documents as inspiration – ‘Look how we did this; how you can organise certain processes, how you can organise certain situations.’ He was not afraid of repeating himself; he was ‘faithful to his luggage.’ A complete set of Mickery videotapes went to DasArts, and also RtC’s books. This was not prescribed study material – ‘It was just there if you wanted it.’ It provided opportunity rather than obligation; it was useful. The only production he ever lectured on was Rembrandt and Hitler or Me (1985), talking through the processes of production in great detail, the ways in which one idea led to another in the construction of the dramaturgy, but ‘always on the basis of the scenario and sketches’. Eventually everything from Mickery went to the archives of The Netherlands Theatre Institute. But RtC’s own archive is passed on into other hands, given away in order to encourage others in their artistic endeavours. He was, she feels, neither nostalgic nor sentimental. Although he was perceived to be a gentle man, he could be hard, cruel, uncaring even. He did not feel beholden to people if they were no longer in step with where he was. He shared visions for periods of time, and then freed himself from relationships and responsibilities in very radical ways. He wanted individuals to be free and active for themselves. His urge was always to move

forward, to provoke reflection and to stimulate new formulations. To the very last… We end with his funeral, for which he himself planned the order of service. Why was she asked to say something? Why were these five invited to speak, and not dozens of others? Perhaps because he valued certain individuals; perhaps too because in the purposeful exclusions, he wanted us to continue to reflect upon our attachments to him, to a history, and to other ways – purposeful rather than anguished ways – we might carry forward a legacy.

35 A book chapter

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Temple Hauptfleisch, Lev-Aladgem Shulamith, Jacqueline Martin, Willmar Sauter, Henri Schoenmakers, eds. 2007. Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi. In a chapter entitled ‘Hybrid Festivals. The Mickery Theatre: in search of a dramaturgy of fragmentation’ (119–37), Professor Henri Schoenmakers frankly struggles to locate the programme of Mickery within a proposed typology of theatrical events and festivals. But his long-term studies of audiences and their reception of Mickery’s various activities do provide him with unique insights into its presentational structures and dramaturgical approaches, and to recurrent concerns and themes. It is a valuable summary of equally long-term strategies. He identifies lineages of presentational format, notably recurrently towards what he terms – appropriately perhaps in this volume – ‘fragmentation’. In 1967 the Traverse Theatre Club performs five mini-plays directed by Max Stafford-Clark, to encourage new writing – Cover Story, Trio (by James Saunders), The Gymnasium, Natural Causes and 26 Efforts at Pornography. In Grupo Tse’s History of the Theatre (1972), mini-performances are presented in different styles, periods of theatre history represented by a single prop or short ten to fifteen minute sketch – Molière’s Femme Savantes, Shakespeare’s Macbeth that lasts three minutes, and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. In Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was (It is the kind of theatre one could expect and foresee) (1982) and De Macht der Theaterlijke Dwaasheden (The Power of Theatrical Madness) (1984), Jan Fabre references theatre history, in an ironic reframing of narrative coherence and conventions of production, echoed also in The Wooster Group’s inclusion of a fifteen-minute version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in L.S.D. (… Just the High Points…) (1986). Theatrical ‘urban myths’ abound around the latter: that Miller took out an injunction to prevent his work’s inclusion in this sprawling evocation of the 1960s; that the group took lysergic acid and

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Nel Slis/Mickery/vpro, Galgemaal, 1984

videoed themselves trying to perform it, and then mimicked the recording in the production; that in performance whilst it was spoken so quickly so as to make it indecipherable, American audiences remained aware of the sequence of events, in a drama familiar from high school. Its presentation at Mickery within an extensive schedule of touring marks the establishment of a new European circuit of festivals, venues and promoters. Such fragmentation he identifies too in the Fairground productions. The success of Fairground (1975) presented by the fictitious Concept Theatre of Boston in which spectators in the hovercraft boxes saw three different performances in the same space, led to a change in policy, with Mickery shifting to produce work characterised by new presentational structures, the use of new technology and new media, and the manipulation of audiences. In Fairground ‘84 (1984), two recurrent concerns converge: the movement of audiences, and the inclusion of mini-plays. Intended to showcase recent developments in British theatre, Traverse, Edinburgh, contributed the work of three young playwrights; the ica, London, a work by Caryl Churchill; and Chapter, Cardiff, musical scenes from Chris Jordan, Trevor Stuart and Moira Mouse. Presented in a hall on the outskirts of Amsterdam, performers now joined audiences in the three hovercraft boxes. In History of the Theatre (Part II) (1988) staged in a warehouse in Rotterdam, the four boxes each containing thirty spectators now also included video monitors. One box was extravagantly upholstered, with decorative lights. The dramatic sequence for one audience

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included Squat Theatre’s version of ‘L’ Train to Eldorado; Theodora Skipitares’s Micropolis; a videoed interview with Peter Sellars and Liz LeCompte on the future of theatre; a film of The Wooster Group’s Death of St Antony by Ken Kobland; Stuart Sherman ‘manipulating little objects’ in a section from his Suitcase Performances, an interpretation of Hamlet. Then parked next to each other, audiences witnessed the first results of the work-inprogress of Needcompany – Ça Va; the monologues of New York drag queen Ethyl Eichelberger; and finally film scenes by John Jesurun, in which an actor asks to be returned to the real world. It was, Schoenmakers notes, more like circus than theatre. Schoenmakers describes seasonal programming. In ‘Kijken/A short look’ (1980–1), fifteen groups and individual artists presented thirty productions in a ten-week period in an attempt to re-assert Mickery’s position as a significant theatre venue. It was accompanied by extensive marketing (buy five tickets get the rest free!) and characterised by what RtC termed ‘surplus value’. Enhanced insights for audiences might ensue from juxtaposing individual works – for instance, Michael Burrell’s Hess, Leeny Sack’s The Survivor and the Translator and Beryl Korot’s video installation Dachau 1974. In the 20-week season, O Brave New World (1983), ‘messages from society’ were specially commissioned, including Squat Theatre’s Mr Dead and Mrs Free (1983) in which spectators visited them in their living and performing space. There were also examples of social intervention. In Edmondo Zanolini’s Wedding Film Festival the accumulation of donated footage demonstrated the adoption of media conventions within everyday activities. In Galgenmaal (Last Meal) (1984) public interviews were staged with Dutch cultural commentators ‘to emphasise how private persons start a kind of role-playing in order to present an image of themselves in front of the audience’; interviewer and interviewee sit waist-deep in a hole in the rostrum. The implicit concerns here with the role of media, echo concerns of the ‘Making theatre beyond television’ project. In ‘Back 2 Back’ – a programme presented in 1989 at a time when Mickery was without a permanent venue – two different performances were staged each night at Frascati Theatre in Amsterdam – ‘to present one experience’. It included Bak-truppen (Bergen, Norway), Societa Raffaello Sanzio (Cesena, Italy) and The Drawing Legion (Iowa City, usa). It was an international festival in all but name. Over a twelve-day period in 1991, the Touch Time Festival was presented in a number of theatrical spaces around Leidseplein, including the Stadsschouwburg, with seventeen different performances; a film programme containing Peter Sellars’s Dr. Ramirez, on the fall of Wall Street, and David Hare’s Wetherby; and continuous television registration by Touch tv Time: ‘Like the Mickery programmes of old, it requires to be

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seen in its entirety: the spectator should feel invited to discover connections, to make comparisons, possibly even to draw conclusions’ (Mickery Pictorial II 1991, 479). I witnessed Eric Hobijn’s Delusions of Self Immolation in which he demonstrated a hydraulic apparatus reminiscent of the sculptural contraption in The Ballista (1984) that could instantaneously set his body on fire and extinguish it – four times daily, in an empty swimming pool; the anarchic energy of John Malpede’s Los Angeles Poverty Department; Station House Opera’s Black Works in which clouds of flour fell into a black space where it was shifted and swept into patterns by the physical movements of increasingly whitened performers; and Brace Up!, The Wooster Group’s sublime version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters. The Touch Time Festival acknowledged artists from its earliest days on Rozengracht such as Bread and Puppet Theatre and Ken Campbell, and other lasting associates. It was a leave-taking, a final curtain: part elegy, part state-of-play, but at the last a provocation, too. In September 1990, RtC visited the Los Angeles Festival, curated by Peter Sellars. The experience was to prove affecting. Touch Time concluded with Hawaiian hula group Halau o Kekuhi. In a photograph on the final spread of Mickery Pictorial II RtC listens to director Nalani Kanaka’ole, his cigarette unlit in a pause that recognises different voices, new attitudes in global culture – but that others will have to take up.

36 Early days The quest ends with two encounters that could have come at the beginning.

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a Loek van der Sande (Gallery owner) Conversation: 16 September 2009, Amsterdam

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He was for a short while involved in commissioning commercial promotional material and through this met RtC professionally for the first time; RtC was in his very early days an audio-visual producer for a leading Dutch TV production company. They instantly became good friends, even buying a 17th-century house together in Loenersloot, which they split between their respective families. ‘Family resources allowed RtC to start Mickery Workshop, a dream of multimedia multicultural presentations in a very old but for the purpose totally rebuilt farmhouse.’ His partnership in an avant-garde gallery Seriaal in Amsterdam, with the co-founder, Wies Smals, strengthened the relationship. Now, as a cu-

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Johnny Speight/vara/Mickery, If There Weren’t Any Blacks..., 1965

rator and activist, he emphasises the initial significance of the gallery and RtC’s growing appreciation of contemporary trends in body art, performance and installation. From the outset, the involvement in visual art was explicit; Mickery would provide opportunities for artists of the Arte Povera movement that established life-long relationships. Late in life, RtC would fulfil his own ambitions in that field. He stresses the importance of television from the outset – in the recording of If There Weren’t Any Blacks and Nina Simone – a direct consequence of RtC’s work as a producer, and the proximity to Hilversum, the centre of Dutch media. And the significance of the formation of the Mickery board, a small group of influential individuals in the Dutch arts scene that added status and credibility to funding applications – as income from television, art buyers and RtC’s own funds disappeared ‘like snow under the sun’ – and guidance in management, that would eventually guarantee a continuity of programming. They were willing and able ‘to fulfil a dream’, to support an initiative that they regarded and successfully characterised as ‘a contribution to the cultural scene in the Netherlands’.

But it became an increasingly ‘urgent matter to participate more effectively in the cultural life of this country’. We ran out of audience. We always had the same people, sort of leftist, intellectual, white, wealthy; and some people directly involved in theatre and film making mostly in Amsterdam. A move to the city was the ‘only way to get into the bigger world’. The search was begun for ‘a proper location’. I remember like yesterday that we knew the movie theatre was running out of business. And we had a look there to see whether this could be the new site for the Mickery. But I couldn’t see a possible way in which the theatre could move. Ritsaert always saw a way and he had a clear vision [of] how to do it and who to involve in it, to turn this stuffy film theatre into a contemporary theatre, which he had seen here and there, like La MaMa in New York. That inspired him.

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He witnessed Mickery’s growth ‘from a spiritually exciting but rather small operation to a far more professional seriously equipped theatrical organisation’. His involvement was always twofold: as a member of the board, in a position to provide support in running, guiding, facilitating – unafraid to confront civil servants, even to recommend productions. And as a personal engagement ‘with the mind of the Mickery Theater’. But he remains realistic about its impact and importance, certainly in terms of audience: We had sometimes ten people. It’s never been at a level of hundreds of thousands, television-like audiences. It’s always been very, very limited and those people came as the real theatre lovers or because they were [inquisitive] about the maker or because they remembered some of the outstanding actors. But the effect of it all, I don’t think we should exaggerate.

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Yet its reputation was far-reaching – ‘Everyone knew the name Mickery.’ And it appeared at a time when very small elite groups involved in avantgarde activities in Amsterdam could challenge a parochial art establishment. The direct influence of Mickery was ‘its mentality’. The theatre presented at Mickery – free from historical bonds and traditions of exposition – was viewed with contempt by some local artists; in other circles and contexts, its activities were regarded as paradigmatic of a growing international confidence.

Their rapport and his critical expertise lead him to be perceptive and candid about RtC’s own production work, ‘with the whole hullabaloo around it – making, writing, making the scenario’. Because of his old love for and acquaintance with contemporary art, he introduced all sorts of elements that were derived from the art scene, which made his work quite interesting. It was always a step ahead of what most theatre makers were doing, at least here in Amsterdam and other cities. That was an interesting move from importing to producing. Above all, ‘he wanted to make a picture’. And whilst his productions seem to presage or at least parallel aspects of the postdramatic, his approach was essentially ‘unintellectual’ and pragmatic – ‘Using visual and audio and all sorts of elements as long as he could create an image that was to his liking [...] which probably had no relevance to the subject at all.’ He once came to my house, grabbed all my gramophone records – whatever was on it. When he felt like it, he used it. This was very religious music from the sixteenth century, made only for that particular occasion – ‘I don’t mind.’ He used it anyway.

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In this opportunistic assemblage that took ideas from productions he had seen elsewhere, the design was often ‘very pompous – way out even beyond borders that were digestible for me’. However, even though his attempts did create professional jealousy – ‘Most of the time in a way that you had a lot of fun.’ He values the ethical dimension in RtC’s work: I think his productions had some relevance for society. Ritsaert came from an aristocratic industrial family, although keeping a Heroic attitude during World War Two, which was – with the exception of his rather eccentric, from the family estranged, mother, who was a very talented piano player and the daughter of a well-known theatre maker – not so directly involved in the daily troubles and sorrows of society. But you could always find a line in his work about ethical issues – always a sentiment and an ethical line. We sit in a gallery where RtC’s artworks are exhibited – his photographic reproductions of Rembrandt’s face, his child mannequin selling military toys in Peace? Been there, done that – and reflect upon the twin strands in his

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work, that may have been more or less explicit in his productions: the polemic, didactic ‘over-shouting themes’, and the personal, the autobiographical. He points to RtC’s increasing inclusion of allusions to his own remarkable family background and the relationship with his industrialist father; the effect of the Second World War in his recurrent articulations of war and peace; and incidents such as the death of his brother, even if this did lead him to decisions not always appreciated by other artists, with the inclusion, for instance, of personal letters. Not that that would have worried him. He would always listen courteously to friendly advice and criticism. And then do the opposite.

b Ruud Engelander

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(Dramaturg; met RtC in 1968 – ‘became friends and jointly discovered the still unmapped territory of new theatre in the 70s’; never had a formal relationship with Mickery, but was an unofficial sounding board for Ten Cate, especially in the early years; active in international theatre projects and networking from the late 1960s.) Conversation: 15 September 2009, Amsterdam

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It was during the political and artistic upheavals of the late 1960s that they met. Although he had heard of Mickery, it was regarded as elitist within his student circle where the frustrations, attitudes and activities that would lead to the ‘Tomato Action’ and the demise of the old system of repertory theatres and fixed patterns of subsidy were beginning to ferment. For the unprecedented numbers of students and young professionals wanting to make theatre – ‘All the seats were taken, all the chairs were occupied.’ The structure did not adequately reflect the situation, as it existed; and it would collapse ‘like an old tree, just needing a push’. In 1968 and 1969, he helped organise a fringe festival in the small adaptable theatre at the Institute for Dramatic Art on Doelenstraat in Amsterdam, presenting among other groups Open Theatre (usa), cast (uk) and Welfare State (uk). Perhaps out of inquisitiveness, perhaps to check on potential competition, RtC came to call, leaving the questions to his business manager. And Engelander in turn visited Loenersloot. It was eye­ opening. He witnessed ‘a kind of acting in a space the size of this room’ that was ‘enormously direct and moving’ – a real alternative to existing conventions in Dutch theatre. He would attend every performance thereafter. As general secretary of the International Student Theatre Union between 1969 and 1971, he had unrestricted access to festivals in Zagreb, Wroclaw and Parma, where new dramatic forms were being tested, and young

Children of the Night, An die Musik, 1975

writers and directors were finding opportunities. In Poland – where the official censor largely ignored student work – companies such as stu appeared, combining in their performance style powerful acting and visual sophistication. As his friendship with RtC developed, they travelled together, recognised as an inseparable ‘comedy double act’. Theirs was a relationship based on mutual interest and curiosity. These were trips of discovery, revealing possibilities – ‘It was an education for both of us.’ And they talked incessantly. The experience would inform policy and programming at Mickery. RtC’s approach was intuitive. He acted on gut feelings. Of a production in Italy – ‘I would wait’; ‘No, we have to have them now.’

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Ritsaert looked for people who did something with conviction and that could be physical, and it could be political. He was not a very political person, certainly not in those years. He became more political over the years. He looked…for energy, conviction, people who knew what they were doing. And he wanted it to have some impact on the audience, whatever the impact.

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But RtC had no preconceived ideas about the nature of theatre. He approached everything on the basis of what he saw – ‘You have to see him as a visual person.’ He was always drawing. He had to visualise to understand. But there was always something interesting in his choices: in Pip Simmons’s work, the choreography between actors and audience; in La MaMa the strong physicality, the effort, ‘giving it to the audience’. In repeated showings, he presented ‘a consistent view of a group’s work’ – ‘He was loyal even perhaps when he shouldn’t have been.’ Only once did he see RtC angry – at Tenjo Sajiki, ‘when their demands became too much and too many’. It was over the proposed staging of Solomon the Human Airplane in Arnhem in 1971, which he had been invited to produce in a unique moment of formal relationship with Mickery. They first visited the Nancy Festival together in 1971, attending four shows a day without ever knowing what to expect – ‘always a surprise’. That year they walked out of Robert Wilson’s five-hour Deafman Glance… and then returned the following evening. They ‘got hooked’. So did everyone else who saw that ‘magical show’. But Wilson’s rapid rise was already placing him outside Mickery’s means. However, RtC gave director/ playwright Paul Binnerts, who ran the University Theater in Amsterdam at the time, his blessing to persuade the Holland Festival at one month’s notice to take the production, even though the programme was already fixed, and the publicity printed. It was Binnerts who eventually produced the work and found investment from Dutch television. RtC promised to include him in his prayers for the rest of his life, were he to succeed; Binnerts is convinced he did. Booking the work they saw was not always easy, as companies quickly returned home, or went elsewhere. And so the networking – that later became a key feature of production and dissemination – began with the preorganising of tours, though Nancy always expected the premiere; practicality gradually supplanted unpredictability. Together, we look through Mickery Pictorial I – ‘the most reliable source’. For him, it resembles a family album. In the stark black-and-white images, he recognises old friends, identifies unnamed actors – Joe Chaikin, Meredith Monk. He is broadly judgemental – ‘This is typical’; ‘This was important at the time’; ‘Great stuff’; ‘Those were ex-cons’; ‘They were fun’; ‘I hated that actress’; ‘Fascinating work’. He is revealing of detail – Das Erste BaaderMeinhof Stück (1974) credited to Schauspielhaus Bochum was a production that Pip Simmons directed, and for which they developed the text together ‘during three weeks in Len Graham’s cottage in Ellesmere, the same Len Graham who lent his name as director of the Boston Concept Theater that made Fairground, Leonard Grehm!’ Commissioned to create a version of Schiller’s The Robbers for Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Simmons proposed a

more contemporary topic, but suitable actors were difficult to find in Germany. Then Peter Zadek offered to stage the work in Bochum, but Simmons’s style proved impossible to transfer – ‘It wasn’t good.’ Revealing, too, of shortfall – the photographs of Children of the Night’s Dracula (1974) show nothing of the ‘self-supporting steel tube structure and rope web’ that was the central element of the scenography. He opines that the number of images of any particular production demonstrates its personal significance for RtC – several for instance of the hoax that was Concept Theatre. The volume jolts us jointly backwards. We pause on Children of the Night’s An die Musik (1975) on which he worked with Simmons – ‘It was such a lucky coincidence of inventive acting and inventive directing and relevant subject that it was perfect in many ways.’ Although based in Rotterdam and benefiting from the new regime of subsidy, RtC acted as an eminence grise for the company – providing contacts, supplying advice. The Mickery bookkeeper did the administrative work. Unusually, An die Musik transferred from its premiere in Rotterdam to Mickery for a further week – ‘One of the most important pieces ever created.’ I agree. On Mickery’s achievement:

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It showed that there are more ways of producing theatre and presenting theatre than at that time was regularly accepted in this country. That was the most important thing. I don’t think in terms of acting style or playwriting. The fact that Mickery existed contributed a lot to those things. They would have come anyway, through other channels. ‘It showed alternatives.’ It stimulated ‘awareness that you don’t need a large proscenium stage’; that theatre can be energetic, moving. And as individuals from visiting companies stayed in Amsterdam to teach – ‘Dutch theatre was exposed to lots of different voices.’ ‘An accumulation of new things filled a void.’ ‘Plus the luxury of seeing a lot of foreign work you would not otherwise see.’ ‘Where would you go and see it now?’ And RtC? At Mickery, he crafted an atmosphere. ‘He created the circumstances for people to feel happy, as an audience but also later in the bar. He was in a benevolent way manipulative.’ ‘He was a shy man, very modest.’ He never said an ugly word about others. He had an ability to focus on you as an individual. One bone of contention between them was RtC’s own productions that he found ‘not always interesting in dramatic terms’. 171

His own theatre work suffered from the stress he put on the visual, on the image, and he would neglect what we like to see in a play, which is some dramatic tension. But he always offered possibilities and ideas, even in his later speeches after he had become an authoritative voice: He contributed a great deal to people’s awareness of what they were doing. He could ask certain questions that really made you think about ‘Why am I doing what I’m doing?’ And he also asked those questions of his companies and certainly in the workshops that he did – ‘Why do you do what you do in the way that you do it?’ Maybe DasArts was a good end of his professional career. He could then afford to be the teacher that he also was. He believed in certain things and he wanted to share them with other people.

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Later, he responds to my text; it occasions ‘an avalanche of memories’. He approves of my unorthodox approach: ‘Not a history, but almost an encyclopaedia of good practices, the author going around in circles to find the truth.’ But he reminds me of its limitations, of how it inevitably excludes many whom RtC influenced ‘drastically and meaningfully.’ How certain individuals appear under-represented: ‘[Flemish director] Franz Marijnen, [us storyteller] Bob Carroll, Squat Theater (later Elephant Theatre and then Love Theatre and then Squat Theater again, if I’m correct) and its founder Peter Halász, to mention some RtC felt strong connections with.’ And he takes me to task for not attending closely enough to RtC’s family and oldest administrative colleagues. Obviously everyone created his own image of the Mickery and you, as its and his archaeologist, are entitled to do the same. You put your accents where you want them. There are always a thousand observations and anecdotes that will die with the people who have them, but that can’t be helped. The big question remains of course how the book will appeal to new generations who have at best heard of Mickery and RtC: does it make sense; can they do something with it? It is hard to judge for those who were there at the time, because they fit the pieces of their own puzzle together, as I did, and you, while writing it. But that is something we have to accept. 172

His final incredulity relates to Pip Simmons and why I haven’t spoken to him, ‘out of reverence’. Close to finishing the manuscript, this is an admonition too far. He is, of course right. I decide to go in search of Pip Simmons.

c Pip Simmons On 18 November 2010, I receive an email from Pip that begins with renewing acquaintance, and memories of Chapter in Cardiff – ‘I loved doing Woyzeck there (even though I nearly set fire to it all!).’ And then to RtC and Mickery: [...] I loved Rits dearly...he took care of me and the group and always encouraged us...I can’t really explain how close we became for a certain period of maybe 20 years...we were friends who provoked and encouraged each other to try things we wouldn’t have dared do otherwise...especially after the demise of the ‘alternative’ during the mid ‘70s. I also loved Jac Heijer...a sweet and perceptive critic who even when he hated things tried to see if they mattered.

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The Mickery was often accused of being a club for the middle class intellectual bores of Amsterdam out for a look at some tits and bums and conscience...that was to ignore who Rits was and the intensity of his love and dedication and trust for all who had the privilege of being there...A great technical crew...Yvonne Bonn...the administrator...etc etc. Everybody was welcoming, enthusiastic, loving...an avant-garde theatre which introduced many of the best seen in Europe...Terayama, La MaMa, Kantor etc but a loving family as well...I’ve missed them all for the twenty years since it stopped and I stopped as well. [...] I’m very sentimental about those years and the friend I lost not long ago. I’d be very interested in what you write and hope I can see it one day...if only to make some contact with my memories of a time when I was juvenile and an embarrassment to myself as a person but apparently somehow matured a bit through the process of working...and the love of others.

37 Another video Ritsaert ten Cate. May 2008. The Offering: a meditation. Amsterdam (dvd). At the centre of the screen is a small wooden structure with an elaborate, tiled roof, set on a four-legged plinth against a grey concrete wall that

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shows traces of blackening: a shrine, bird table, garden ornament perhaps, that hints at Japan. The soundtrack seems to mix street noise and Buddhist chanting. He enters from the left, bald pate familiar, body thinner than some will remember, in blue short-sleeved shirt, arm naked, back towards us, face – his serious face – in profile. Eight times he extends his arm with great delicacy and precision to place objects, flowers in the main, into the interior. He withdraws. We wait. A jet of billowing flame, orange and yellow, suddenly fills the frame. As it subsides, the structure is revealed on fire, crackling. At times the conflagration almost disappears, drawn up into the roof space, then emerges again, curling around the eaves. Pieces of debris begin to fall. It demands our attention: it’s only a matter of time. The shadow of a bird passes. And then it collapses, catastrophically. The roof topples, the finial falls. All that remains is the smouldering plinth. He enters again from the left. In the charred remains, with great delicacy and precision, he places fruit and flowers that resemble, in their composition, a Dutch still-life painting. He withdraws. He will not return, ever again. The video lasts seven minutes and twenty-three seconds. It is entitled The Offering: – a meditation. It is credited as collaboration with Catherine Henegan and Eric Hobijn. How typical that he should choose to work in these dying moments with a South African video maker who studied at DasArts and a Dutch pyrotechnics artist whose reputation was assured after his performance of self-immolation at the Touch Time Festival. Typical too that it is to be found on YouTube, on the latest platform of performative exposition. How extraordinary, and typical, that he had the prescience to make this, with the same mix of resignation and creative hope that he brought to the dramaturgy of his own funeral, an event that ninety-year-old Ellen Stewart would travel to Amsterdam from New York to attend. It is the final work of Ritsaert ten Cate, made in acknowledgement and embrace of his illness and the inevitability of his own passing. He has the last word and typically – though nothing was ever typical about Ritsaert – it is a question: What does this mean? A metaphor? But for what? His own life; his career trajectory; the restorative power of art; the fate of the us? Maybe he’s just burning down the house, the house of institutionalised art anyway. Reminding us: Do It! Or maybe it is his own house – Mickery. For although it will involve the lives and work of many others – long-term colleagues who at times resemble a family, fractious and supportive by turn – it is always his conceptually. Never will he be forced into accommodating work he does not respect,

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The Offering: a meditation, 2008

frequently will he re-orientate its priorities – it is his for the burning. That he found a means to do apparently as he liked there is, for some, suspect; doubts cast on his own productions. But that is to miss his urgent disquiet, about theatrical form and structure; and his enduring sense of social responsibility, in engaging contemporary political issues and in the creation of an inquisitive and questioning audience. When he heard I was working on a book on Mickery he was full of admonitions to write my own version, and to have fun. As Marijke Hoogenboom noted in her funeral oration, his final words to her were – ‘Take care of yourself. Make every effort to find your limits. Have fun. And if you are not having fun, shift position.’ Towards the end, I asked him to list the ten most significant moments at Mickery. He compiled instead a list of ten people to speak to. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe they have some version of events that he approves of. Maybe I’ve become his envoy in a round of unfinished business. Difficult to escape the feeling that some of us at least are forever part of his unfinished story. Certainly, many of us would not be doing what we do without him. Many will attest to Ritsaert ten Cate’s importance in their lives and careers as mentor, councillor and teacher. Two of the first obituaries to appear were by filmmaker Mike Figgis and publicist Mark Borkowski who

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writes: ‘He always seemed at peace; maybe that was because of the triumph of his principles.’ If we remember one thing of him, it was how he could turn any problem, even in the darkest hour, into a question, into potential. At the memorial event, we throw his ashes into the harbour and light small fireworks. It is low-key, without ostentation. Many of us – those of a certain age – glimpse our own mortality. But then in the renewal of old acquaintances at the reception at Discordia, there is talk of new projects. And three of us discover that he has left each of us one volume of Cornelius Nozeman’s Nederlandsche Vogelen (1789), the first book of Dutch birds, with exquisite colour plates, from his father’s library. This he did in awareness of our personal interests, attentive to worlds outside theatre, irrespective of their considerable value. But what responsibility! We realise the need to bring the books together, to do something, a new project perhaps, without quite knowing where, or how, or indeed why. Even now, he has made something happen. And in the video, the blackened wall? Perhaps a hint this has happened before, always happens, will happen, continually. Our only option, to go on…

38 A keynote

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Ritsaert ten Cate, For the Arts and against everything else, Mickery, Amsterdam, 20 August 1989. In August 1989, RtC opened a conference on international co-production at the Internationales Sommertheater Festival at Kampnagel in Hamburg. His text outlines the tenets of his own philosophy and that of Mickery, too. Apparent, too, are intimations of the unease that presaged his own change in direction and the closure of his venture. Its tone is by turn rhapsodic, reflective, cautionary and prescient; it is included here verbatim.

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This conference is about producers. Not about art. That’s okay as long as we keep the difference clearly in mind. There will always be artists; there will always be art. Art – by its very nature – will indicate the ways in which it will manifest itself. The art determines what kind of production it needs or for that matter what kind of producer it requires. The best a producer can do is to be responsive to cultural developments, be a sounding board in the creative process, and develop formats to showcase artistic product. In short, the producer must be directly supportive of the artist.

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Simeon ten Holt/Mickery, Horizon/Canto, 1991

This is what Jack Lang did for the arts – if not for individual artists – with the Nancy festival, and what he did for culture with the celebration of the French Revolution; the key to both of these examples – was the producer’s responsiveness given a situation, given a place and time. What art is can only be determined on an individual basis – this does not work collectively. The creation of art is always a highly individual activity. So, too, is producing it. If a producer is trying to force the pace by creating catch-all systems to present artistic product he’s in a danger area: he is beginning to assume the role of politician and power broker by using art for his own purposes rather than serving the arts for what they are. Thus it is a contradiction in terms for a group of people to get together and discuss the problem of production generically. Which is not to say that producers cannot talk together: it’s necessary to talk together if only for moral support. But let us get rid of the illusion that these kinds of meetings and this kind of discussion accomplishes any direct benefit for art and artists. For instance: there was a time when it was organic that several theatre-makers, producers, programmers, and artists who were first and foremost friends, met at the Polverigi festival in Italy. By any standard of the time, Polverigi wasn’t really what people

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thought of when they said ‘festival’, it was more like a date in everyone’s agenda, a place to meet amidst the villagers of Polverigi with that strange mixture of theatre artists and lovers from all over the world. And, festival or not, one thing was clear: whatever happened at Polverigi would be unique. The sense of world championship theatre-making would be absent; there would be no competition. Only lovely weather, leisure, time to sit on the grass, drink vino frizzante, feel at ease, feel free. And later, sometimes several hours later than the appointed time, there would be a performance. The performances always had a sense of their place: they were about the creativity of one person or a group matching its wits with a situation which had nothing to do with money or technical facilities, but was only about creativity in its purest form performing for a public unspoiled by a so-called better knowledge of what theatre is supposed to be. No smartass cleverness, just the beginnings of something beautiful, a dream. A dream that carries its own nightmare seeds, for of course we ourselves cannot let such things be. Polverigi: a potency upon which we would capitalise for years, within the conclusion that those years were there, an ongoing gift. The value of Polverigi was to be treasured, not exchanged for a debate. Hindsight. What evolved from the dream? The group of people who were so happy meeting in those unspoiled environs said to themselves: Let’s call it the Informal European Theatre Meetings. And so it happened. Now, roughly eight years later ietm is a group numbering in the hundreds from all over the world, and it is informal no longer. I warn you that this story is not about nostalgia. It is about recognising what was, and what truly is. Here is the big lie: that people of occasions like this one are getting together for any purpose other than strengthening themselves. The truth is that these gatherings do nothing for art in any direct sense whatsoever. It’s the fine distinction that makes a world of difference. These are occasions where co-production money can be found, or presentation dates, or where a definition of commonality can lead to practical applications of resources with corresponding solutions to problems. Producers’ problems. But while we all know that producer’s’ problems are supposed to be secondary to the artistic process, you and I know that more often than not producers’ problems threaten to take first place. However wonderful

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our personal ideals, however saintly our motives may be, we are also creating a potential threat by creating a governing structure which we will impose upon the arts. For instance: the artist does not require that his or her function be expressed by a manifesto written by us producer types. The endless unesco conferences devoted to formulating ‘the status of the artist’ were useless, and I wonder why we persist in this kind of activity. The artist does not benefit by having his or her working area mapped out by artificial means, or through the oppressive use of the word European with an additional timetable imposed by tacking on the date 1992. The development of the Informal European Theatre Meetings is a case in point. Since its beginnings as a date and a place for informal gathering it has moved inexorably toward institutionalisation, to something further and further away from art. It has become politics, a political body. As such it may be necessary – even an essential organ for producers, but allow me to point out that, once again, the arts are left to fend for themselves. It is vital to recognise the difference here. When this difference is not recognised we are in danger of blatant betrayal, of institutionalising our lies. Back to Jack Lang for a moment. It was his megalomania, his lust for power, his energy and his growing perception that what would be good for him would also be good for the arts that gave the Nancy festival a spectacular life force. When he left, propelled by his own driving force into politics, the festival died a slow death. So now he produces the cultural developments and trends for a country. He pays what some might consider a high price for that: by following the trends of culture he has become deaf to the needs of art. Thanks to his high visibility from the very beginning of his career we have been served a warning about the trends of cultural politics, about the arts as a power tool. It is no accident that art fairs and festival abound, that every major city is striving for a profile which suggests the liveliest cultural climate. Frankfurt is a good model to study as a model for culture as a sales tool. Culture, in all its manifestations can be, and often is, a political animal. Art is not. So if we look at 1992 and its suggested cultural importance we can already see the outlines for yet another series of fatal misunderstandings, misunderstandings for which the arts may end up paying heavily. Certainly the possibility exists that talking about Europe 92 will

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result in practical improvements, in a technical, economic infrastructure which might help smooth out the logistical nightmares which are all too predictable once the borders are down. But for the arts these problems don’t even exist on the edge of consciousness until after the art is there, until after the art’s organic evolution. Talking about what Europe is ‘culturally becoming’ is an absolute farce, a waste of time and insulting to boot. This kind of conversation is about making Europe smaller than it already is: it simply means more of the same kinds of things and at the same time, less space for what is different. When we talk about Europe we talk about a geographical area between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains. Almost unbelievably it is Mrs. Thatcher who wants to include the New World as a part of Europe. And I must admit that I cannot see why we should feel more related to the farmers in Sicily than we do to Americans on the East Coast. Our creative focus must be on nothing less than Western Civilisation. Those of us working internationally have been doing just that, and for longer than the slogan in Europe in 92 has been around. The cultural aspects of 1992 are an enormous red herring, not unlike the discussions in 1982 about the status of the artist. In both cases the red herring is a cover-up for one inconvenient fact: that what the arts need is first line support. And if preserving a national identity is truly a concern – apparently it is, if you listen to the growing and concerned chorus of politicians from all countries – why, then, let’s simply pour money into the arts. The arts, when given support to do what they do, naturally express individual cultures without problem. They don’t even have to try to do that. But the current application of cultural slogans to the possibilities of 1992 ignores this fact. On the smallest possible scale we can see the system’s problem working under our very eyes here at the Kampnagel complex. Three million DM will be spent on repairs for the building while the program budget remains the same. Its cultural politics for glorified artistic ghettos. After all, three million sounds good to a constituency, and the revamped buildings will be a permanent reminder of tax money well spent. Yet where a real, cultural identity could be developed…no further support is forthcoming. But there is a limit to how far we can blame the politicians. It is our – the producers’ – responsibility to make the politicians understand that they need not worry what the arts are doing while

they must help provide general support. And I suggest the way for producers to do that is not to get wound up in politics themselves. I’d like to close with a quote from the speech Peter Sellars gave at Mickery on the occasion of our 21st birthday party. He said: ‘When we sign on to spend our lives in the arts, we sign on to devote our lives to areas of danger, to areas of difficult questions that are much too difficult for politicians to consider. Politicians must respond to all questions with simple, clear cut answers which inevitably simplify the real issues. When we come to the arts it is our task to render issues in their complexity. To be able to face those grey areas that other people involved in financial transactions or governmental transactions really cannot, for the sake of their jobs, acknowledge. I don’t mind it, that our jobs in the arts are really very precarious and hinge on these small and difficult points which, in the end turn out to be large and difficult points.’ I believe Peter to be correct in his observations, and would add to them: let us consider getting rid of our self-created white noise, the meaningless terms like ‘the need for understanding our different cultures’, the red herrings and our fears of complexity. Instead let use our vital energy to create freedom for the arts and their public, not inhibitions and cages.

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39 Epilogues 1 In 2000 Ritsaert ten Cate left his post as director of DasArts to dedicate himself to his own visual art practice. He would spend a year in New York. In 2003, he would enrol as a student at the Rijksakademie. Later he would open a studio and gallery space in Amsterdam called Touch Time. ‘Touch Time’ is also the name of a website maintained in tribute – http://www. touchtime.nl. It contains his writings from the 1990s, and transcripts of the eulogies delivered at his funeral. Whilst there is little on Mickery, images of his major artworks are included en masse. They provide glimpses of his basic political concerns – with exhibitions entitled Peace? Been there, done that 1, 2 (2001, Amsterdam) and Pax & Peace, and etc (2005, Almelo) – and of his compositional strategies, that remain essentially theatrical. There are awkward juxtapositions of the antique and the

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Ritsaert ten Cate at the time of Cloud Cuckooland, 1978

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kitsch – toys, ornaments, old statues, military equipment, stuffed birds, splashy watercolours. Swans in a glass case fly over the large letters p aand x; a wicker deer teeters on stilts; cases of insects are arranged on music stands; dead woodpeckers are strapped to firework rockets… Formal, stagey arrangements – sometimes like shrines; sometimes like scenographies without actors, or awaiting actors… And always a sense of the Dutch baroque: In Honesty Stolen from the Experience of a Lifetime – 2 (2005, Leiden), Rembrandt looks at us from multiple colour images of his face. His final work is entitled Staged Realities (2007): four compositions, each including 20 colour photographs – a bound calf, a helicopter, a snake, a stuffed crow, a teddy bear… 2 11 August 2008, Amsterdam He was tired and obviously weaker, lying on the couch at the houseboat, under a patchwork quilt. As I listen now to our conversation, his words are often indistinct, though as much the result of not wanting to put a recorder directly in front of such a sick man, and my failing hearing. He mentions names that I don’t recognise, follows non sequitors, enters blind alleys, describes fleeting images. But the strength of his opinions is undiminished. He still cracks wicked smiles and occasionally gestures broadly.

And from where I’m lying, it’s only about money now. And creating with money – as little money as possible – a grudging space for stuff that you didn’t want in the first place. It’s not for nothing that from theatre or art that culture is moving towards folklore and football. And we are still in the background within that financial pattern. He regrets the passing of a generation of demanding artists – ‘creative actors, perfect actors…and crazy’. Americans in the main – Robert Anton, Stuart Sherman, Reza Abdoh. ‘There are more people in America that are absolutely totally crazy and mad.’ It becomes a predicament if you want to explain good things of the period in the hope that you may inspire a translation for now. Could an artist like that survive now? John Jesurun can hardly survive. To orientate my writing, I had asked him to list ten key events in the history of Mickery.

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You asked for moments in my life. ­Those are personalised, emotional moments and that’s where it ends. You can’t do anything with it. What I did do was make a list of people who somehow played a role in a certain unexpected aspect. Many of the names are familiar, others not. Most I will eventually meet. They seem chosen with care not only for what they did at Mickery but how they carried the experience forward – ‘It’s so much the people and their careers, and their involvement with the arts.’ Otto Romijn who organised the festival of local amateur theatre groups at Mickery – ‘My request, I couldn’t have coped with it’ – that they arranged secretly for actors from Het Werkteater to win. And who went on to programme the Royal Tropical Institute – ‘There you have already the beginning of multi-culture, long before people started talking about it.’ Frans de la Haye – ‘He’s an industrial designer; all the shelf spacing was designed by him. Somehow we caught him right at the beginning of his development.’ ‘Max Arian, critic – one of the few who not so long ago has voiced his opinion also that Mickery was first to really experiment with public, and public relations to the action.’ Some I regret not meeting: graphic designer Anton Beeke ‘who made fantastic posters that everyone talked about’; Jetta Ernst – ‘Her relation-

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ship to Mickery was to edit Mickery Mouth, our newspaper that later got combined with Toneel Teatraal, the Dutch Vanity Fair’; Eric Hobijn – ‘a revolutionary but as sweet as they come’. In 1988 Hobijn helped to mount the chaotic machinic ballets/battles of Survival Research Laboratories: What a coward I was, or am. I had decided we have to programme this. It is an important phenomenon that I hated: ‘I don’t want to be responsible.’ So I was away. Eric was involved very much with that on a regular basis. Hobijn’s own work would be programmed at the Touch Time Festival – ‘A great example of how Mickery influenced or helped his career.’ Others I am unlikely ever to meet – the well-known feminist, now in government. ‘As an audience member, she came to seek out men with her friend, and they were the most beautiful couple. There is even a chapter in her book where she describes it. She was an icon in her time.’ Or Mickery’s number one fan – ‘He always was sitting in the first row, he always was there on the opening night and usually came; you could measure the success of a production whether he would come two or three or four times.’ ‘I’m very much also mentioning the people…it’s them and Mickery.’ Of certain Mickery audiences, those who ‘had their opinion already ready’: We tried to fool them around, or well, manipulate them, but then also to feel the manipulation – ‘Pay attention here because this is happening in your daily life, on a daily basis.’

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I talk of my excitement at material discovered in the archive, what I might make of it, and my ambitions for the book. Well, in the shortest version I think, if the material, the book, can tell anything, it could be the exciting finds of the research, although personally, fantastic as all those things were, why haven’t we got that now? It’s totally unrealistic now. Impossible now. How do I ever explain the original context to younger readers? ‘Well, that’s your bit.’ Colleen leaves the room. We fall silent. In the background, the hum of the city, children playing at the school nearby. 184

I don’t know how to say this. From my point of view, there is no beginning and no end. It just stays there exactly close to the beginning. If there’s something to be taken out, I say ‘Okay that’s alright’, it doesn’t mix the chronology…It doesn’t matter…It can be… It doesn’t need it all, your book. But I had the sense you were there on the borderline of freedom but not…avoid rules and regulations…anybody who wants to make a scientific project, that’s his or her problem nobody else’s…and certainly not yours. Do you have any more desires for the book, for what I write, any…? No. Up to you. Have fun. If you have no fun, if you think ‘This is a chore’, drop it. At the end, I find it difficult to leave. How to say goodbye? ‘See you next time’, he says.

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3 Jan Lauwers tells the story of a late visit from a consultant who tests the strength of Ritsaert’s grip. It remains firm. So Ritsaert gives him the other hand to try. You are a funny man still. You still have humour, why do you want to die? You have to be in desperate pain. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘that’s no problem. I’m always in desperate pain. When I see the world around me, I’m in desperate pain. Is that okay?’ 4 Ritsaert ten Cate died on 5 September 2008; with him at his passing were Colleen Scott and Sijbolt Noorda.

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Jac Heijer and Ritsaert ten Cate, Nancy, 1975

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Postscript

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Between its birth in the mid-1960s and its demise in 1991, Mickery served as an essential entrepôt and ‘observation post’ for new movements in theatre. In its policy and choices, it reflected the changing social, political and cultural conditions and contexts of that period, and their impact on performance form, subject and distribution. Mickery exposed Dutch audiences to contemporary advances in world theatre, demanding from them equally new ways of looking, experiencing and responding. And it supplied the Dutch theatre world – albeit partially – with new inspirations and influences. Mickery played an important role in nurturing, staging and advocating alternative practices from Europe and beyond. As receiving house for touring productions and as a producer of invited companies and its own critically under-regarded performances, it commissioned, provided a platform for, and effected the genesis, nascence and development of key works, many of which achieved canonical status. It was one of those distinct, differentiated and unevenly distributed locales in which a particu-

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lar avant-garde was enacted, and in which the practices of the so-called ‘postdramatic’ (Lehmann 2006) – new forms and aesthetics in theatre ‘beyond drama’ – gradually came into focus. Mickery was particularly significant in fostering British and American work, affording crucial financial support and, as an outcome of ‘international’ appearance, the kudos and critical attention that enhanced reputation and status in home countries. Mickery, as both presenter and producer, provided an ideal for similar institutions, both extant and emerging. It was a principal promoter of, and participant in, networks of dissemination and co-production in Europe. Despite its foundational years at Loenersloot, Mickery was an essentially urban phenomenon, manifest in a birthplace of northern European civil society. It offered an opportunity for a self-selecting few. Its influence – as much through rumour as first-hand encounter – far exceeded its scale. Mickery was the vision and expression of one man – Ritsaert ten Cate. That it enacted his personal tastes and predilections, that it was reliant upon his nerve and unswerving commitment once committed, is without doubt. But in its manifestation, it involved the concerted effort, energy and application of many others who, at least for a time, could share its hopes and ambitions, and capitalise upon the opportunities it offered. Many of us now advanced in years recall Mickery at a stretch of memory. Certainly selectively, usually with pleasure, though often of occasions when plans went wrong ­­– hazy memories of collapsed hydraulic boxes, of nights of nudity, of performance durations almost beyond tolerance. Condensed into transient snapshots, into passing erotic reminiscences. But reawakened in conversation. And in these voices, in combination with the scraps of this or that documentation, are revealed glimpses of approaches and phenomena that give historical dimension and provide the beginnings of a genealogy – ‘who did what, when, and then went on to do’ – to contemporary strands of theatre making that constantly profess, out of fiscal necessity, their newness, their existence ‘without precedence’. Memories of a place where experiment could be undertaken for its own sake, where audience approbation was not necessarily the ultimate reward, where failure always informed the next time. All that remains…

A quest

Mickery itself has gone; it is difficult to imagine all that happened there from the current interior that was reordered and refurbished in

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2004–2005. Futile, too, to attempt the wholesale recovery and restaging of past productions, however complete their record appears to be. For it is their world that has gone, all that made them meaningful at the time. What survives is a multitude of fragments: ideas, images, concepts, strategies, propositions...These at least we might reclaim from storage, and put into play once more. It is in the close scrutiny of these individual pieces, in the adhesion of this or that shard, in the speculative filling of the gaps, that a certain place and its people demand of us – and engage us in – new creative acts. Here from the ruins, further projects emerge.

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Academic: The recovery of the Mickery modules: to use them practically, to appreciate for instance the implications of particular configurations upon viewpoint for techniques of exposition. How is this or that seen from this angle? How is it to perform with an audience on three sides? Not to pretend then to an understanding of the aesthetic details of a historical theatre and its reception within the social and political context of the period, but at least to examine the impact of physical conditions of performance and the opportunities and demands that they may offer. The restoration of the model of Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun and through the simplest of means, to appreciate the kinetic and choreographic complexities of the production, and the changing relationships of action and audiences, plotting moves against other modes of description: Mickery in motion. The re-imagining of ‘Mickery 3-dimensional’ through computer-aided modelling, visualisation and rendition, the convergence of recorded material in various media, animation; Mickery as inseparable figure and ground, in digital domains such as Second Life.

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And artistic: In August 2010, I direct a site-specific production of a new version of Aeschylus’s The Persians for the recently founded National Theatre Wales – in a replica village built to rehearse urban warfare, on the British Army training ranges in mid-Wales. The audience is taken to the site by coach and upon disembarkation invited to dress in khaki ponchos. As they gather in the bleak, hilltop village square, I drive directly into their midst in a black 1960-vintage Rover 100 saloon, and deliver the Chorus; the Queen will eventually arrive in a matching white car. As the Chorus begin their bombastic, jingoistic opening speeches – full of nationalist exhortations – through crude megaphones from a simple dais, this is revealed to be a triumphalist rally, in anticipation of vic-

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tory in Greece. The audience are themselves Persians-by-proxy, already implicated; some even applaud the Chorus’s words. Manipulating the audience... Chorus and audience then walk in procession to a house lacking a façade, its rooms open to view from a small grandstand opposite. It is normally used to demonstrate the armed clearance of a domestic space for watching recruits. Here, the production unfolds – in a combination of live action and pre-recorded video that is shown on a series of monitors located throughout the house, and on a large projection screen in an upper storey. And of ‘live video’ relayed from on-stage cameras that deliver not only footage of extreme close-ups of the action from privileged viewpoints, but also of private scenes and responses enacted covertly in back corridors and behind closed doors. All the performers wear radio microphones, their amplified voices mixed with the musical soundtrack and transmitted through speakers directly into the grandstand. With perfect sound and brightly illuminated images, The Persians resembles a ‘live film’ in the landscape. Theatre beyond television... Later, I realise the profound, though subconscious, influence on the production of all I have read and heard over the past three years. Of the two long-term Mickery projects – not programmatically implemented, but acknowledged as open-ended and enduring provocations in theatre making. Of aspects of Pip Simmons’s The Masque of the Red Death, Peter Sellars’s Ajax and Ritsaert’s Rembrandt and Hitler or Me – all invoked en passant. Of practices first operative 30 or 40 years ago, that still have the capacity to inspire... The quest ends then not with Mickery-as-it-was but Mickery-as-stillyet-to-come...

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The reviews of Jac Heijer

1970

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1 ‘ R ats Mass by La MaMa, Gripping Highpoint in Repertoire’ Haarlem – One of the few blessings that the United States has enriched Europe with is new theatre. Over the last couple of years the companies that have been formed in New York include: Living Theatre, Open Theatre, Bread and Puppet Theatre and the La MaMa Repertory Company. They have all visited our country and anyone who has seen them perform will understand that something must, and can, urgently change in our own theatre. The audience for this sort of theatre is no longer a collective that watches from a distance, and the performers are no longer play actors who scarcely require any connection with the play. What is important in the new American theatre is that the viewer is an individual; you are involved, you break out in a sweat, your heart beats faster, you often leave wrecked after it has finished. The same is true for the performers. ‘Empathise with your role’ and ‘written for the part’ are concepts that no longer apply here. The application comes from much deeper. At the moment La MaMa is in our country. It is chiefly performing at the Mickery Theater in Loenersloot (the majority of the performers are even sleeping there, in fairly primitive conditions). La MaMa’s method of working is approximately this: over the course of a month the director, writer, or adaptor, and a group of performers discuss the play. Characters are tried out in performance, as is the text. After the text and casting has been determined the actual rehearsal begins, whereby the director, true to tradition, has the most to say. After approximately two months the play is ready for performance. Sound décor, songs and lighting are created during the preparations. For the present performances in the Netherlands the actor Lamar Alford is also the music man; Laura Rambaldi does the lighting. In the Mickery Theater they are preparing a play under the Viennese director, Götz Fritsch, about the medieval precursor to De Sade, Gilles de Ray. It will soon be performed in Vienna. La MaMa is performing various plays here, of which I have seen four: Ubu, Arden of Faversham, Cinque and Rats Mass. They are performed in twos. The first two are of European origin, the others were written for La Mama. The four performances share a staggeringly ingenious direction. Particularly in Arden of Faversham one views in amazement the form into which this drama, from Shakespeare’s time, is poured. It concerns a fatal triangular relationship. The wife, who is possessed by her passion for her

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192

lover, has her husband murdered. Passion, vengeance, guilt and dark anger are converted, by means that are as simple as they are impressive, into images that come at you like whip lashes. For example: the husband is murdered in a sort of ritual; the wife castrates the corpse using a life-size saw; she crushes two eggs over him, before he is wrapped in a transparent plastic shroud; the stage becomes dark; a voice calls out: ‘madam your husband is dead’; then a torch shines on the wife’s face; ‘seek the guilty party’, she says with blood on her face. The wife is Michèle Collison, big, heavy, not beautiful, a naked face and an inescapable personality. (Moreover, she has excellent diction, something that many of the other performers lack. Not that this is so awful; the sincerity in their performance is persuasive enough.) She also plays mother Ubu in an adaptation of the currently very popular play by the Frenchman Jarry. Ubu is an anarchist who becomes a dictator; he is not ashamed of his lust for power, yet with the same ease he dons a slave’s chains. His wife is a monster of avarice. In La MaMa’s version father and mother Ubu perform on a mountain of toilet paper and other junk; with a lavatory bowl as a throne and a feed bowl. William Griffin Duffy, who is as impressive as La Collison in terms of his appearance, plays Ubu as a wonderful tramp-like, smart customer. The two short American plays, Cinque and Rats Mass, are very different. In Cinque the writer, Leonard Melfi, portrays a number of Americans: terrified of sex, escaping through television, cigarettes, quasi-intellectual chatter, fatherland loving pursuits such as playing cowboy, terrorised by a sheriff. The play is a cleverly worked out cabaret sketch, by the director Will Leach, which probably comes over harder for Americans as far as the content is concerned than it does here in Europe. Did we not already long think that this is how Americans are? The execution is a disappointment. La MaMa plays a sort of character type maker, which does not really seem to suit. Rats Mass by Adrienne Kennedy goes much deeper. The story is quite simple: a white girl of Roman Catholic, Italian origins, named Rosemary, drives her black neighbour boy, who is in love with her, into incest with his sister. His sister is expecting a baby and goes insane. As does the brother. They call themselves brother and sister rat. The play resembles a poem full of memories and associations. It deals with the total destruction by the whites, and by himself, of the black person, who has been abandoned by society, the church and God. Adrienne Kennedy clearly establishes a link to the racial hatred of the Nazis, who are here representative of the whites. All this is terrible to listen to. It becomes even worse when you see it performed. One sees two black actors, Lamar Alford and Barbara Montgomery, humiliate them-

selves so deeply that it is a heart-rending experience. For themselves and for the audience. Patricia Gaul plays a splendid Rosemary; the beautiful, vicious, white bitch, who pronounces the death sentence over the black people in the name of Christendom and God. How these three actors survive this play night after night is a mystery to me. La MaMa is performing a second version of this play in the Netherlands. The first, which was only put on in New York, was even more aggressively directed at the audience than is the case now. Thank god, I might say, because I already find it gripping enough. The director of the second version, Ching Yeh, has given the play (the most important one that La MaMa has brought here) an ending that was not included by the writer. A positive ending: brother and sister rat get plugged. Nevertheless, they get up again. Rosemary has them shot once more. But they remain standing and look at the audience with raised heads; Rosemary stands there watching while she stamps her feet. Someone from the company explained to me that this militancy on the part of the humiliated people is precisely what La MaMa was aiming for as a company. [...] haarlems dagblad, may 9th 1970

1971

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2 ‘Ou r Su n day Ti mes by Traverse Workshop Company from Edinburgh’ Loenersloot – It is an uncommonly flawless performance that the Traverse Workshop Company from Edinburgh is presenting in the Mickery Theater until April 12. Our Sunday Times, as the play is called, conveys a wealth of thoughts with the simplest means. The play is about loneliness, not in the sense of absence of interpersonal contact, but the loneliness of everyone who can only ultimately realise himself within himself; the loneliness of everyone’s death. This looks rather deep written down here, but the wonderful thing about the writer, Stanley Eveling, the director Max Stafford and the performers of the Traverse Workshop is that it is portrayed without the least bit of pretension. At first glance, the cosmic subject is related in a fairly complex manner, via the history of two people: Donald Crowhurst and the girl Jenny. In the autumn of 1968 Crowhurst participated in a race around the world in oneman ships sponsored by a Sunday paper. (Think of Francis Chicester and Alec Rose). Crowhurst died during the race. He had sent the world false reports about his position so that it seemed as though he had already sailed

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a long way in the right direction. In reality, he was drifting around the Atlantic Ocean. In this same period a girl ran away from home to go to London. She was also never seen again. She was (so the play tells us) murdered on a national trunk road and subsequently raped. Eveling (the writer of Dear Janet Roosenberg, Dear Mr. Kooning, which can be seen on tv here) puts into words the inner worlds of these two people and the murderer in a metaphorically rich, poetic manner. This primarily occurs in the second part. In the first part it is chiefly the ‘outside world’ that is talking. A cross section of the British people is presented in a sort of collage of reports about, and reactions to, the race, the unease of the parents of the runaway girl, a Christmas party, the inanities in the Sunday papers, star worship and also the historical consciousness of the British (for example in the ‘famous last words’ of Sir Walter Raleigh, Nelson and other sailing heroes). Not being an Englishman I could only follow the first part poorly. But in the second part much more becomes clear. There, the anecdote acquires much broader dimensions. Victim and murderer drift away on the ship of death, their hands together forming the lotus blossom. It is the same ship, the same deathbed, on which Crowhurst comes to the Great Insight. The sea is no longer the sea, but the proto-symbol of the unconscious, the great challenge for every person. The confusing puzzle pieces that are thrown up in the first part are laid into a whole in the second. And all of this occurs with a great deal of irony and alienating effects. Whenever it becomes exciting or moving we are presented with a sentence, a song (the performers make music themselves, and how!), or a situation that confronts you with the reality in which you sit as an observer. Meanwhile, the actors perform wonderfully. The eventual theatre form came about because of the writer, director and performers working jointly. The writer, as he explains in a gloss, determined the verbal framework in which the performers were able to work. A method that has produced wonderful results here. I have never seen anything comparable from Dutch theatre makers. Our Sunday Times will be performed at various theatres on the Mickery circuit, but once again not in Haarlem. It will be in Amstelveen on April 20th and in Leiden on April 25th , for those aficionados who do not want to go all the way to Loenersloot. march 31st 1971

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1972 3 ‘Unique Event at Mickery’

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‘tse’s History of Theatre: a “sophisticated’ deathblow” The History of Theatre by tse. Company: tse. Direction: Alfredo Rodriquez Arias. Performers (leading roles): Marucha Bo, Facundo Bo, Zobeida Jaua and Nyrma Prieto. Seen January 19th 1972 in the Noorderkerk, Amsterdam Amsterdam – The company tse performed The History of Theatre in the Noorderkerk for the Mickery Theater; it was a unique event. tse is a group of Argentines that have been living and working in Paris for a number of years. Two seasons ago they were in the Netherlands with Dracula and Goddess, the first of which was on television. In April, the company is presenting a sort of thriller, Comédie Policière, at the request and under the auspices of the Thèatre National Populaire in Paris, which demonstrates that tse’s star is on the rise. And rightly so. In The History of Theatre (and also a performance such as Dracula, for that matter) tse is engaged in the attempted premeditated murder of the conventional theatre. Other companies have also done this, but the surprising thing with TSE is that the murder weapon is also a perfect highpoint of the sort of theatre that it is attacking. The deathblow is extremely refined, ironical, elegant and sophisticated. A lady speaker explains the history of Western theatre, from raw pagan rituals to modern theatre. This history is presented as a fashion show, in which some periods are evoked merely by a single prop (an elegantly born phallus 1.5 metres long) and others by a very abridged, but essential reproduction of a famous drama. It is hardly a drawback if the spectator does not know the play personally because the excerpt is so improbably skilful. The explicator (wearing a ladies’ dress suit, with silver make-up on her forehead and a silver sliver in her cropped hair) dishes up a text that could be straight out of a popular science book. It is a text that one hardly notices the inanity of at first because it is delivered with the most engaging smile and underscored with the most elegant gestures. But it is precisely because of that smile and these gestures that a little later the inanity penetrates you with its full power. You are constantly and subtly made a fool of. While the lady speaker carries out her work of clarification, three performers appear from a ‘solid’ marble wall, where three openings have been left in, and they perform some demonstration or another. The basis of these demonstrations is mime, but a very idiosyncratic sort of mime,

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which remains quite distant from all that inclines towards the sweetness of the French school. Some mini-dramas are parodies (Molière’s Femmes savantes, Goethe’s Faust and Hugo’s Hernani are finely knocked off), but others are much more. Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire not only amuse, they also moved me very powerfully. In that last piece Marucha Bo plays a Blanche Dubois that leaves all of the Vivien Leighs, Ank van der Moers and Lies Frankens far behind. Furthermore, this mini-scene captures Tennessee Williams’ drama precisely. It is a remarkable fact that TSE ends the history of the theatre with this Tennessee Williams play. They do mention the names of more highly esteemed playwrights such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, Brecht and O’Neill, but nothing of theirs is shown. It cannot be a question of inability because whoever is able to evoke the angst-ridden, blood-soaked nights of Macbeth in one scene, lasting barely three minutes, can do anything. It must have been deliberate. Everything that tse does is deliberate, up to and including the moment that the female speaker drinks water from a champagne glass at the side of the stage. TSE focuses on (or against, if you wish) the conventional theatre and sees its endpoint as A Streetcar Named Desire. The portrayal ends with the remark that the play was filmed with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando in the leading roles. This remark is also the end of the performance. Film is the successor to the bourgeois theatre. At least for tse. Whoever now seriously continues with it is a museum curator, wonderfully ridiculed by tse. The performance is directed by the wizard Alfredo Rodriguez Arias, who together with his performers Marucha and Facundo Bo, Zobeida Jaua and Nyrma Prieto and other personnel, presents a sort of theatre for which no genre-name exists. And it is not necessary. The genre is called tse. haarlems dagblad, january 20th 1972

4 ‘Caricatured Racism as a Test of Conscience’ ‘Black and White Minstrel Show: a slap on the head for “the friendly white”’ The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show. Company: Pip Simmons Theatre Group. Direction: Pip Simmons. Seen August 16th 1972 in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show – which premiered yesterday in the Mickery Theater – is a slap on the head for every well-intentioned white person who is sympathetic to the plight of discriminated-against black people. The Pip Simmons Theatre Group from London leaves no means unused to rub the noses of the white members of the audience into

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a number of extremely unpleasant propositions. Note well: Pip Simmons’ group is white. White people, suggests Simmons’ group, have subjugated black people to such a degree that they have grown too afraid even for revolution. (The show is equally unkind to Black Panthers). There is no point being against the discrimination of black people out of humanitarian considerations. When it comes to the crunch, even the sympathetic whites must acknowledge colour, and it is not black. At the end of the performance George Jackson – as a symbol of the Black Panther revolution – hangs manacled in a sealed post-sack some way above the floor. He frees himself from his manacles, but before he can escape from the sack he is shot dead. Now, as a well-meaning white person you will be sufficiently sympathetic to feel pity for the fate of the black people portrayed. But this pity is false. At least this is what Pip Simmons tries to demonstrate. The performers after all are not black. With their painted black faces they do nothing other than portray black people in the way that white people wish to see them. Whether they might be stupid, dancing, praying or raping apes, or even aggressive, haughty Black Panthers, ‘the slavery of the negroes will last another thousand years.’ So says the chief ringmaster of this circus. Is this suggestion the secret fantasy of every white person, or an absolute truth? As one of these tolerant whites, I hope it is neither, but after a show with so much overwhelming violence in it, you do begin to doubt. According to tradition a black and white minstrel show is meant to be entertainment. But it will be clear to you that this George Jackson show is far from entertaining in the pleasant sense of the word. The idea of the black and white minstrels conjures up precisely the inverse world of racism magnified beyond all proportion, which is exactly what Simmons is aiming for. The group’s approach, as was also clear in a previous production like Do It!, involves a shamelessly insolent treatment of the audience. You are spared nothing. The performers approach you with butcher’s knives and handcuffs. Firecrackers explode all around. Bananas fly about. Even fire is spat over the audience. Just before the interval a slave auction begins, which proceeds so chaotically that before you know it you are entering the foyer with a ‘slave’ cuffed to your wrist. And he keeps on performing. The worst aspect though is the loathsome racist jokes and cross talks. I was at least happy when I was occasionally unable to follow the English text because of a lack of knowledge or poor acoustics. The group clearly uses this tough, direct, insolent approach to prevent us from hiding behind a sort of collective benevolence. Simmons and his group try to compel you to take a personal standpoint. This will work bet-

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ter with the one observer than the other. You rarely see a show in which form and content need each other so much. You could not describe it as fun, but you should at least have seen it. haarlems dagblad, august 16th 1972

5 ‘“Opium War” in Mickery’

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‘Japanese Theatre Jam-packed with Surreal Images’ Ahensenso by Shuji Terayama. Company: Tenjo Sajiki. Seen October 12th 1972 in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam – For a while you think it is all nonsense: fumbling through chicken-wire fences, several metres high, that you continually have to step aside for. But once you have worked your way through all the irritation and annoyance, you are overwhelmed by a very exceptional experience: Ahensenso, a theatrical work by the Japanese company Tenjo Sajiki, which had its world premiere in the Mickery Theater yesterday. Of course, there are still people who will not accept that they have truly been won over, but it is doubtful whether they will still consider it nonsense. In any case, you go home chockfull of memories of the strangest, surrealistic images. Tenjo Sajiki (for further information about this company I refer you for the sake of convenience to the abundance of information that is not simply provided out of vanity) is a company that engages in participation theatre. That is to say: the audience has to take part. Your first reaction is: not on your life. But the nice thing about this company, in contrast to the pushy Tokio Kid Brothers, for example, is that they do not demand involvement from the audience. The observer is led to this stage unconsciously but inexorably. It is as though the company anticipates such reactions as ‘nonsense’, ‘not on your life’ or even outright irritation, to ultimately get the audience where it wants it to be: possessing a strictly personal perspective and an individual standpoint in regards to what is actually taking place. After the visitors have gathered in the foyer in the Mickery Theater, everyone is led outside to the rear. There, on the wall, a performer is strumming a guitar with a live rabbit before him. And when you are entering the theatre you also come across performers here and there with wonderfully made-up faces. There is a labyrinth of fences in the half-lit auditorium. You can hear music and occasionally the hoots of an owl. New fences are placed amongst the audience, which is gradually enclosed. Strikingly dressed performers (including a girl with a birdcage over her head) make a

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procession with candles or torches around the audience, which reacts with cynicism, aggression or boredom. Then the performers arrange themselves into groups of three or four; a girl is massaged, a boy stacks slats with Japanese texts on them; a girl giggles hysterically underneath a desk. The audience realises that the fences are less hermetically sealed than they first appeared. And out of a sense of boredom you soon try to get into the other spaces and see the different events. You follow a beckoning girl to the cellars of the theatre, where in the various cubicles and rooms there are surrealistic near-still lives: a hovering chessboard with a burning candle (that you view through a keyhole); a record player playing a broken 78 record; a humming boy who is trying to brick a doll into a wall. In the meantime there are entirely different things taking place upstairs. A visitor is blindfolded; a naked boy relieves him of a tweed jacket, waistcoat, tie, shirt, sits him in a seat and begins to smear his naked torso with oil, and this transforms itself into a lengthy, tender necking session that – after the man and boy have clicked – is completed without spotlights. Elsewhere a hypnotic girl entices another visitor to go with her. A long, low table is laid for a meal. The host has his servant seat visitors at the table. A washtub is brought in that is filled with buckets of water. A beautiful girl lets herself be washed in the tub. She strikes her maid whenever she does anything wrong. The meal proceeds with lazy ease. But violence lurks. One of the performers strikes a geisha to the ground and kicks her. The child cries soundlessly; the other performers laugh at her. The situation is so humiliating that one of the onlookers cannot contain himself and strokes her comfortingly. Some way off there is a patient lying on an operating table, with deathly white, black-spotted make up. Three surgeons (with respectively a donkey’s, dog’s and horse’s head) continually put on and remove rubber gloves prior to proceeding with the operation on the patient’s head. The patient dies and is carried off on the tabletop. Then it turns out that a naked boy had been lying underneath it with a bandage wrapped around his head. He stands up and lights a cigarette. You think that it is all over and you intend to go to the foyer. But first you have to proceed through a narrow chicken run to the balcony, where a sultry opium den has been set up. There, a boy is jogging on the spot, up against the painted backdrop that the opium den has been depicted on. There are beautiful women lying around smoking, some with their breasts bare. A group of girls is giggling around a clock and they move its hands. Pleasant music can be heard all around and in the distance there are deathly screams that you do not let get through to you. The performers move

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amongst the audience, caress and allow themselves to be caressed. Reality blurs. A sensual melancholy overcomes many of those present. Then an individual dressed in a prosaic denim suit springs into the languid company and begins to say a few things in Japanese. Upon his signal one of the four walls of the space opens. Cold fluorescent light from the theatre streams in. As a final chorus sounds you see the performers leave for the dressing room from the balcony. The whole thing is characterised by a mood of ‘early-in-the-morningafter-a-fine-party’; it reminded me powerfully – you do want something to hang on to – of the films of Fellini. Ahensenso means opium war. The director of the company, Shuji Terayama, derived his inspiration from the Opium War between China and Britain and France around 1840. The actual circumstances were not clear to me. So I will quote the meaning of it all from the programme: ‘The liberation of humankind is not only achieved through political liberation from the outside world, but by breaking down the doors of oppression of the interior world.’ This is beautifully put and even if I could not divine the moral from the events themselves, this opium war was nevertheless still a personal lesson for me in freedom from inhibition. I hope that it also proves to be something for you. haarlems dagblad, october 13th 1972

1973

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6 ‘Theatre Company Serves the Neighbourhood’ ‘British Satire on Redevelopment Misery’ Watch it all come down by The Combination. Company: The Combination. Performers (leading roles): John White, John Turner. Seen in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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For fourteen days a theatre company can be seen in the Mickery Theater that is a classic example of what drama can signify socially for and in the neighbourhood in which the company is located. This company is The Combination, which was formed in an alternative cultural centre in the seaside resort of Brighton in 1967. From 1970 to 1972 the theatre company toured with a subsidy from the British Arts Council. In September last year The Combination settled in a radical community centre, The Albany in Deptford, which is a working-class neighbourhood near the old London docks. A neighbourhood that was bombed during the war, then rebuilt

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with flats that were much too small, and which are now ripe for redevelopment. The occupants have lived there for 25 years and now they have to leave for slightly larger, but much more expensive tower block flats. A real house with a garden is no longer an option. The play that The Combination is presenting in the Mickery Theater concerns this housing problem: Watch it all come down. In the programme the company states: ‘This is the true story of Deptford. It is not objective. It does not try to be precisely chronological. It is based on the stories that the people tell, on the way that Deptford feels life there really is.’ You cannot find a better-formulated starting point for social theatre that really has some significance. It is primarily the fact that the work is not objective that appeals to me so much. Objectivity often comes down to simply the view of the one who can best formulate it. And this is almost never the underdog. The Combination takes the side of the occupants and gives form to their grievances. The company accumulated the material for the play in the pubs of Deptford, a neighbourhood where theatre has never existed and entertainment consists of cinema and card games. The Albany is where action groups such as the tenant’s association have their headquarters. Just like everywhere, the majority of the occupants accept their fate with resignation or anxiety. In order to make them conscious of the situation in which they live and because of the necessity of making a fist of it together, the community centre uses the theatre company as a means to an end. The Combination provides melodrama for the pensioner’s club, street theatre for the children (the photo caption for one such event reads ‘The big monster sticks little children in tower blocks’), free expression clubs, schooling for adults, guerrilla theatre for action groups and ‘plays for the struggle’. Watch it all come down is one of these plays for the struggle. It takes the form of a satirical comic strip with villains and victims, and the housing problem as its subject. A working-class woman and her aging father form one group. The house owners, with the politicians, civil servants and social workers, the other. The master criminal (straight out of the Batman series) is Lord Jingo, a girl made up to be monstrously fat and bald, who represents the capitalist system. His most prominent henchmen are a marionette-like member of parliament and an intimidating housing official. It is clear to the observer: this is how the worker sees the conspiracy that forces him to live so wretchedly. Although it is English, the play shares a lot of similarities with Dutch conditions of redevelopment and rent liberalisation.

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One of the finest elements is the performance of the social worker, Lord Jingo in disguise, who during an enchanting dance with the workingclass woman discloses the theoretical and practical aspects of the social support from the current home to the expensive tower block flat. She illustrates the practical component by briefly putting the woman in a double Nelson. The text is very funny – and I was not even able to follow the Cockney jokes that reduce people to fits of laughter in London – and the form is derived from popular drama and typical British vaudeville. Music plays a great role. Every scene is followed by a song: simple rock or musical ditties. The excellently performed show takes perhaps a little too long for Dutch ears, but what The Combination is all about comes over hard and yet entertainingly. Everyone who is concerned with the misery of redevelopment neighbourhoods, and everyone who wishes for something different from theatre than merely to serve art and beauty, should see it. It appears that both groups can help each other. haarlems dagblad, february 8th 1973

7 ‘The Ignorant and the Insane in Mickery’

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‘Culture is a Dung Heap’ The Ignorant and the Insane by Thomas Bernhard. Company: Theaterschool. Direction: Gerardjan Rijnders. Costumes: Klaas van Beek Décor: Hadassah Kann Performers (leading roles): Rutger Weemhoff, Jaap Hoogstraten, Dea Koert. Seen May 8th 1973 in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam – Culture is a dung heap upon which the art of theatre and in particular its most artificial form, opera, positively thrive. It is not for ordinary people. The audience that goes to watch opera and other forms of theatre is blind. These are roughly the standpoints of the Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard in his play The Ignorant and the Insane, which premiered yesterday in Mickery, performed by the Theaterschool. The writer evidently loves his Austrian dung heap so much that he still wanted to create an evening-long work to propagate his critique. Sir will certainly be correct, but I still think it strange that young theatre makers would wish to disseminate his lesson, but not take it to heart and actually abstain from performance. Because, as it happens, The Ignorant and the Insane provides all the opportunities for a nice traditional performance. It

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is, to say the very least, remarkable to see a group of young people so voluptuously demonstrate that actually they are playing the fool. And the theatre in-crowd is said to be blind, yet meanwhile continues to watch a creditable performance with a great deal of pleasure. There are three leading roles: a coloratura singer at the height of her fame, her old, blind, boozy father and a world-famous surgeon: art, science, and in between them the blind, culture-loving public. The ordinary people in the play consist of a dresser and a waiter: they have no opinion and do whatever they are instructed to. In the first part we see them together in the singer’s dressing room. The father complains about her heartlessness; she does not take the least bit of notice of him. The surgeon babbles about anatomy and autopsy. In the second part the three of them are sitting in a restaurant after the performance, eating a chic croquette. And this is when the writer has the great demolition begin. The doctor demonstrates that the operatic art signifies nothing; the singer cancels her contracts and goes insane; the aged father understands none of it. Just like in his eyes, the light goes out in the auditorium and the finely laid table falls to the ground with a crash. It is not an easy play to perform, certainly not for people with little theatrical experience. It is all a question of clearly conveying the writer’s absurdist word goo. It is therefore entirely understandable and forgivable that the performers do not always succeed in this. [...] The refinement that the director Gerardjan Rijnders brought to it was not fully evident. Visually it looked wonderful; Hadassah Kann designed a wonderful décor with panels with old-fashioned opera costumes and Klaas van Beek created a very fine star’s outfit for Dea Koert. The performance can be seen every evening in the Mickery Theater through to Sunday. For the ‘blind’ aficionados. haarlems dagblad, may 9th 1973

1974 8 Measure for Measure by Camera Obscura ‘Shakespeare Adaptation Portrays Corrupt World’ Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare. Company: Camera Obscura. Direction: Franz Marijnen. Performers (leading roles): Thomas Kopache, Susan Lange, Ollie Nash. 203

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Amsterdam – There is only one just person still to be found in the world sketched by the American theatre company Camera Obscura in Measure for Measure, an adaptation of the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. This one just person, the young girl Isabella, comes to a bad end. She is dragged along by the figure that governs this theatrical universe as though she were a helpless rag. Where Shakespeare pleads for humanity (in the application of the laws of the state), the director Franz Marijnen portrays a Sodom and Gomorrah, where monks, nuns, judges and heads of state are no different than the meanest pimps and whores. Everyone is living a lie. Moral integrity is something for adolescents, but for everyone else it is a tool in a totally depraved underworld. Shakespeare’s intentions in this play were quite different. However, much has occurred in the world since then and the director has the perfect right to interpret Shakespeare’s plays so that we recognise something of our own world in them. Franz Marijnen goes very far but what he does is not illogical. The worldview that he presents on stage is one that postdates movements that Freud, Beckett and Nixon are exponents of (I mention a few names off the cuff). He skips Marxism (unfairly) and Marijnen clearly has no time for a more religiously tinted optimism. What is clever is the way that Marijnen has found enough ‘evidence’ in Shakespeare’s text for his own worldview, even if this evidence derives from the paradoxical at some important points. In these cases he makes his characters perform actions that do not arise from the original directions, but which with a little bit of goodwill can be said to derive from the text. Take the character of the duke Vincentio. In Shakespeare, he is a righteous, humane man. This righteousness is reported as a given, but is not actually demonstrated anywhere in concrete terms, except in the ‘happy ending’ where the duke lets everybody have everybody else. Halfway through the play there is a reference to scandalous affairs that concern the duke. He states that this is slander, but does not support this anywhere. In the original play the duke is also the character who introduces and maintains the intrigue. Yet, Franz Marijnen immediately demonstrates that the duke is rotten through and through. He has him enter holding a paper bag that changes owner throughout the entire play, as though it contained an aborted foetus or some such. The duke is a perverse god. Whilst he is dressed in a monk’s habit he watches how his rotten people fare, now that he has left them to their fate, as it were. Sitting aside from the circle where the performance takes place, he watches while he snickers, occasionally anticipating the performers and then he marches them off to their fate, accompanied by the sound of

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funeral music, as though they were marionettes. There is also a second protagonist that deserves closer inspection: Isabella, a novice in a cloister, who pleads to the duke’s deputy for the life of her brother. This deputy, Angelo, promises her this if she goes to bed with him. Isabella refuses, but whilst retaining the original text (which is beautifully written) she does nevertheless undress and offer herself. She does this in spite of herself, which is actually quite logical because she elaborately describes how weak a woman is. The deputy defers his rape. Marijnen simply portrays Angelo as a frustrated creep, which given Freudian psychology, is not all that strange. In the original play Angelo is the central figure, a rigid puritan who succumbs to temptation, but equally rigidly continues to apply the rules of continence. Through this character, Shakespeare traces the development of the play. In Marijnen’s case everything has already been fixed from the very beginning and thus his interpretation of Measure for Measure lacks a dramatic turning point. You could at best attribute this to Isabella’s dismay when she discovers how rotten the world is. Camera Obscura’s performance style, as with previous productions such as Oracles and Maldoror, is very physical. This yields a powerful performance, which just about succeeds in not seeming overly exaggerated, because it is clear that it originates with the performers themselves. The company has improved greatly as far as the treatment of text is concerned. Thomas Kopache plays a completely deranged Angelo, from the twisted manner in which he positions his feet to the forced smiles on his face. Susan Lange plays Isabella as an intense adolescent with bony movements and surly looks. Ollie Nash, who plays the duke, remains somewhat outside the group. He commands fewer nuances of physical expression than the other performers, but is very adept with words. He really thunders away. One impressive feature is the manner in which he suggests in a speech to Isabella’s brother, who has been condemned to death, that life is merely a breeze. There speaks a persuasive deity. Measure for Measure is skilfully thought through, though not an easy performance; the great handicap is the Shakespearian English. You would do well to read the play beforehand. haarlems dagblad, november 14th 1974

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9 ‘First Class Theatre from Pip Simmons’

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‘Dracula a Clownish Melodrama’ Dracula by Bram Stoker. Producer: Toneelraad Rotterdam Company: Children of the Night Direction: Pip Simmons. Music: Chris Jordan. Performers (leading roles): Rod Beddall, Peter Oliver, Emil Wolk, Sheila Burnett. Seen November 14th in the Piccolo Theater in Rotterdam.

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If the performance has been immaculately rehearsed, Dracula is a first class theatrical experience, in which anyone with any feeling for horror can find just what they are looking for. Dracula is being performed by the company Children of the Night (what music they make), which is primarily composed of English actors under the leadership of Pip Simmons. The production has been made possible thanks to the financial support of the Toneelraad Rotterdam. It premiered yesterday in the Piccolo Theater and in December can be seen in the Mickery Theater in Amsterdam. The performance closely follows the book by the Irish writer Bram Stoker, but it should be understood that the 19th-century primness is peeled away and the seriously written narrative is given a circus-like form. Rough, cheerful, clownish, melodramatic, you name it. And the blood – glycerine with red confectioner’s colouring – flows copiously. An enormous spider’s web of cables is stretched over the performance area, in which Count Dracula is the spider and his victims the flies. Dracula (Rod Beddall) is a gigantic baldy in a black cape, beneath which he wears nothing but some black leather gear from a sex shop that specialises in sado-masochistic toys. His female vampires wear muzzles made of the same material when they seduce the unfortunate researcher Jonathan Harker (Peter Oliver) in Dracula’s sinister castle. In the blink of an eye the scene shifts to England, after a boat trip during which the spider’s web is suddenly transformed into the rigging of a 19th-century ship. In the English lunatic asylum we encounter the madman Renfield (F.K. Praetorius), who eats flies and spiders, and who is examined by the no-less-deranged Doctor Seward. Emil Wolk portrays the doctor as an acrobatic clown, who is always on the go with his large hypodermic syringes and electrical appliances. This Wolk was the discovery of the evening, a clown of great class, and the best that I have ever seen. It is around this lunatic asylum that Dracula makes the most of his opportunities. The first to fall prey is Lucy Westerna (the sexy Sheila Burnett), who dies voluptuous and naked in a great profusion of blood. There-

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after, Mina (Rowan Wylie), who is the wife of Jonathan, is threatened. But Dracula is opposed by Professor Van Helsing from Amsterdam, who is portrayed in sparkling fashion by Eric Lob as a spectacularly dressed conjurer and illusionist. After a melodramatic pursuit, which transports us back to the Carpathians, Dracula is ultimately pierced by the requisite stake. But – other than in the book – Lucy remains with him in the coffin. Not everything exhibits equal clarity in the performance; the voyage to England and the connection with the fly eater are not worked out clearly. Why Professor Van Helsing grows afraid of Dracula at a given moment is also mystifying. But, oh well. At this stage the workmanship is far from perfect. There is still some fumbling around with the capes and the props. Lucy’s lily-white dress is all too soon smeared with blood. And the performance lasts a little too long. I consider the most serious problem to be the application of the music and the songs. The performance contains a terribly large number of songs (texts by William Blake, Goethe and others). But this does not matter all that much because the underground pop music by Chris Jordan is outstanding. However, the texts are incomprehensible and perish in the electronic amplification. It is true that these electronics (which are partly live, partly on tape) do suggest empty castles and scary churchyards, but they do nevertheless hinder the voices and the movements of the performers. There is room for a great deal of improvement in this regard. (A recording will undoubtedly appear at some stage; I saw the record producer Boude­ wijn de Groot wandering around at the premiere.) It is a crying shame that the performance is not in Dutch. The audience could be so much larger. But I do not see Dutch actors yet making a performance such as this, unless The Family, Baal and the Werkteater were to join forces and accept Pip Simmons as director. He has once again proved himself to be a phenomenal theatre maker, and just as with earlier productions such as Do It! and Alice in Wonderland, he draws the audience into events in a cheeky and turbulent manner. haarlems dagblad, november 15th 1974

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1975 10 ‘ Fa i rgrou n d by Concept Theatre Investigates Manipulations’

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‘Mickery Audience Rides Around in Cubes at Fair’

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Amsterdam – What they are now doing in the Mickery Theater is a fine idea. You sit with some 20 people on a small bleacher, approximately 3x3x3 metres. This bleacher is covered on all sides with black synthetic cloth. This can only be raised at the front. You are driven around on this cubelike platform on air cushions from one scene to another. At each scene you stop still; during the drive, film excerpts are sometimes shown in this claustrophobic space. Three of these cubes whoosh around and each of the three groups of audience is served a different programme, sometimes containing the same scenes, but in a different order. The scenes are extremely diverse: items of surrealistic drama, a stallworker with pots of seed or roasted satay (‘derived’ from meat from an allbut-real operation; thus human flesh) (ha ha). There were also moments when we had to spring into action ourselves. We were given false noses and hats to wear and bottles of soft drinks and beakers to share out amongst ourselves. Our group’s mood did not get going because we were evidently not the sort of people that are happy in touring parties. On two occasions we saw the audience from another ‘bus’. On the first occasion it was being led straight through the scene of a surrealistic version of Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap. On the second occasion both bleachers were placed opposite one another; the respective front curtains were drawn aside and there we sat, eye to eye with each other. This led to fits of laughter because our group was wearing the false noses. The three groups came together for a musical number by a real mini brass band, with a little tap dance and background projections of Nixon’s mug in different phases of his life. Finally, a serene young man in beautiful light played something on the cello and then it was over. Fortunately. In the foyer there was a camera crew from an extremely obscure organisation, bustling about holding interviews about our experiences. Everyone was vain enough not to realise that this was part of the whole project. The intention was clear. The audience was forced not only to see a number of set things, but also to do something itself. The entire project was an attempt to investigate how far one can go in compelling the audience into a variety of reactions. Every reaction is excellent. A colleague reporter who suffered a little from claustrophobia swiftly disappeared when he smelled the sickly aroma of roasted meat. First rate. The majority of people seemed to have quite enjoyed themselves and exchanged experiences afterwards.

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First rate. I personally find it irritating to be manipulated, but tried to go along with it smiling politely. First rate. A couple of years ago the Japanese company Tenjo Sajiki was in the Mickery Theater. They did something similar. By shifting around metreshigh chicken-wire fences, the audience was forced to move and observe the events depicted by the performers, which were fairly shocking. For me it was a slightly scary, but very exciting, and not unpleasant experience. This is because the scenes possessed a certain dramatic atmosphere of oppression, aggression and suffering. They had a mutual connection and grew towards highpoints, which you could determine and fill in of your own free choice. The dramatic tension was absent in this project, which in one respect goes further than Tenjo Sajiki. You are not allowed to wander around and fill in your own story in the various scenes. You must sit where you are; you are not allowed to choose. Now fortunately the tension did not become unbearable, so at least I quite enjoyed myself. The most amusing thing for me was watching those who shared my fate. The project is called Fairground, and we do not need to attribute more to it than a ride through a light-hearted sort of haunted house. But the idea behind all this is a theatre experiment that demands more far-reaching investigation and longer preparation than has evidently been carried out now. I cannot even contemplate what the effect might have been if truly exciting things were demonstrated. Fairground is a fine sample of what the Mickery staff is able to do with organisation and technique. It all goes like clockwork. The performing company calls itself Concept Theatre, a name that says a great deal: concept in the sense of not yet finished. Use is made of Dutch guests (the stallworker, the cellist, the marching band dok), English guests (from the group People Show) and Americans (Harris family from the Angels of Light). The production and direction were by Ritsaert ten Cate, Rob van der Linden, Annemarie Pijlman and one Greonard Lehm [sic]. haarlems dagblad, march 7th 1975

11

A n di e Musi k by The Pip Simmons Theatre Group

‘Concentration Camp as Performance Tests the Conscience of the Audience’ An die Musik, based on an idea by Ruud Engelander. Company: Pip Simmons Theatre Group. Seen in the Piccolo Theater, Rotterdam. The Piccolo Theater in Rotterdam has been stripped of all its bleachers and

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decorations. It is a bare, black space. There are barrack benches provided for the audience. And on a sober stage there is a table, covered with a white tablecloth and a nine-pronged candelabra with the Star of David on it. Thus begins An die Musik, a ‘performance’ by the English Pip Simmons Theatre Group, based on an idea by Ruud Engelander. To begin, an ss soldier enters and announces an operetta in one act, entitled The Dream of Anne Frank. Four completely exhausted musicians appear wearing black dress coats and colourful bow ties over otherwise shabby clothing; one of them has a bandaged foot. They bow towards the audience and sit down at their instruments. Then four other fearful people enter. They are to perform. The scene is clear: we are in a concentration camp barracks and we are watching a performance by the inmates. We can, must choose which audience we are: fellow inmates or guest ss soldiers. The four performers include a father, a mother, a son and a daughter. The mother recites her poem about profound familial happiness and then taking the middle candle from the candelabra lights the other eight. The music begins; the musicians perform and sing texts from the story of the Golem by Leivick. The family sit down at the table for the Sabbath meal in shocking, stylized movements, and the meal proceeds like a nightmare. This dream of Anne Frank is permeated with the fears of the Jew and the prejudices of the goy. (Once more you have to choose where you stand as an observer.) The Jewish mother who licks off her son (in lederhosen) and stuffs him full of bread. The Jewish father who feels up his daughter. The SS soldier serves the starving performers with food: platters of human bones and hair, a live white dove and finally bread in exchange for the mother’s jewellery, the father’s smart suit and the three pairs of underwear belonging to the daughter (In her diary Anne Frank wrote that she always wore three pairs of underwear just in case she was arrested and sent to the transit camp Westerbork.) After the operetta a performance begins that can no longer really be described as a performance. The actors and the musicians change into brown striped camp clothes with Jewish stars stitched on to them. The boy who plays the son dresses up as an ss soldier, takes a bamboo cane and initiates acts of torture. Raging and swearing, he forces those present to undertake gruelling gymnastic exercises, alternated with cultural pursuits. They perform, sing and dance to German music: Beethoven, Liszt and Schubert. They are forced to entertain the ss soldier with jokes and tricks. Whoever declines will be hung from a very high horizontal beam. To conclude, the prisoners are required to perform a Jewish dance. The cantor uses two tin serving trays as tambourines, which he has to strike against his own head to provide the rhythm. At the highpoint of the dance

the cantor collapses and an ss military cap is set on his head. Then they all undress, fold their camp clothes neatly and place them in piles at the edge of the stage. Everyone settles down on a chair with an instrument. While they play some classical German music the stage slowly fills up with suffocating smoke. One of them reads out a quote from Bruno Bettelheim, which includes the words ‘We must accept with resignation, as the Sons of Israel do, that this is all as it should be. God has willed it so.’ All of them stand up in the white smoke and bow to the audience. Naked. This is no longer a play that one can speak about in aesthetic terms. Rather it demands a strict personal reaction on the part of every observer, the adoption of a standpoint, both in respect to the persecution of the Jews some 30 or 40 years ago and the nature of good and evil in our own world. Even if Pip Simmons’ group does employ extremely theatrical means and does command enormous skill in performance and music, what you see is nevertheless horrifyingly realistic. You want to smash the ss soldier in the face and haul the girl down from the horizontal beam. You do not do this, however, because you realise to your shame that as a goy you are partially complicit in all of this; in what happened then and what might happen again. It is not without reason that the music is our very own classical music. Perhaps as a Jew, one might wish to cry out: it is not the will of God that you are being gassed, resist. The question can be posed as to whether, as a theatre company, you should bring the Nazi concentration camp back to life. My personal answer is: yes, of course. Not only because even an official anti-Semitism is again rearing its head, but also because you must continue to test your conscience – whatever that may be. haarlems dagblad, march 21st 1975

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12 ‘Jostling for Theatre in Nancy’ The Werkteater performed its satire The Party for Nico at the World Theatre Festival in Nancy in French. It was typical Werkteater, which above all is determined that its audience can understand everything. They performed for three evenings in a jam-packed circus tent that held more than a thousand seats. They had absolutely no difficulty in winning over the public, even if their French sometimes sounded very Dutch. The cry ‘Quelle fête! Quel ambiance!’ would become a grand slogan to the visitors at the festival. And the Werkteater received invitations in Nancy to perform at festivals in Belgrade and Rome. A number of theatre companies departed for Nancy from, or via, the Netherlands. The show Libi span by the Doe Groep from Surinam repeatedly drew a full tent. And the audience numbers also increased by the day

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for Toreador by Camera Obscura and An die Musik by Children of the Night. In the end, there were two or three times as many people queuing at the door as could be fitted into the respective auditoria. This resulted in terrible scenes of pushing. Robby Anton, the very extraordinary puppeteer from New York, who made his European debut in the Mickery Theater last month, won international fame in Nancy. Impresarios were busily plotting how to get him under contract. And the transvestite glitter show, The Angels of Light, which caused a furore in the Mickery Theater two years ago, was also invited to the festival to perform the role of honorary fringe ornamentation. It took a couple of days before they achieved such success that they were awarded a fee; the contracts streamed in. The ten-day festival drew considerably more than 170,000 visitors, seventy per cent of whom came from Nancy and its environs and 30 per cent from elsewhere in France and from abroad. There were 1,500 performers spread over 40 companies. The festival is still only moderately subsidised: three hundred thousand from the state and more than two hundred thousand from the city. The companies perform for free; they receive only a free hotel bed and cafeteria food. They have to pay for their travel themselves, but they are often recompensed for these costs by their countries of origin. One scandal took place at the festival this year. A folkloristic company from Iran was forced from the stage during its premiere by a large group of activists who were protesting the Fascist regime of the Shah. All of the company’s other performances were cancelled. For the most part, the festival proceeded peacefully; all the more so because any possible critical actions were averted by accommodating them, as occurred in the case of a public cultural discussion organised by the communist party. It was only during the Whitsun weekend that the organisation got out of hand at various locations because of the overwhelming interest. The policy adopted by the festival resulted in the creation of an ambiguous impression as far as the choice of companies was concerned. They tried to present new things, but they also chose performances that were rooted in the theatrical tradition. There was no question of a consistent choice of political plays; there was too much of a non-committal tendency in the programme for that. And in terms of quality the staff sometimes applied strange norms. In any case, I was fortified in my opinion that when it comes to avant-garde theatre we in the Netherlands have been exceedingly spoiled over the last ten years by what Ritsaert ten Cate has sought out for the Mickery Theater. Nevertheless, I did also see a greater number of interesting performances than boring or bad ones, and there is a horizon-expanding effect

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provided by the sort of festival in Nancy, with all of the different people. A small selection can be seen below. The director Peter Zadek did not allow one decent person to appear in his production of King Lear by the Schauspielhaus from Bochum. They were all degenerate personages who resembled slovenly fairground artistes. Only Lear and his fool possessed any integrity, but they were visibly in a state of unsteady equilibrium, hovering somewhere between madness and wisdom. ‘Man is a worm,’ said Lear. This was perhaps the key phrase, whereby Zadek laid his emphasis on the total corruption of Lear’s world, wherein one must either be blind or deranged in order to preserve any sort of purity. This world was a depiction, a stage. This was why Zadek transformed it into a fairground scene. No personages or sentences remained in the play, without them having been consistently ‘translated’ into the form chosen by Zadek. This was true of both the mise-en-scène and the actors’ conception of performance. This was executed with unbelievable thoroughness and cheek. To quote an example: how did the Duke of Cornwall come by his syphilitic nose? Because there was a jibe made about Cornwall’s nose somewhere in a short dialogue. During the first hours the observers dragged themselves from discovery to discovery, without these seeming like the most natural things in the world. You were continually aware of the influence of the director and his dramaturg Karsten Schälike. But in the most important scenes (Lear’s madness and his encounter with the blind Gloucester) the performance began to live a natural life. This was also due to the manner in which Ulrich Wildgruber interpreted the title role. In the madness scene he scurried around in women’s clothes with a veil over his head. A Lear like Ophelia who looked and spoke with a lucidity that was at once joyful and childlike; a madness that made one feel happy. Every role was cleverly thought through. Lear’s confidant Kent, for example, was not the usual straightforward chap, but the type of intellectual, highly placed official that survives every changing of the guard. Another example: towards the end of the play messengers and soldiers were portrayed by one actor, who represented death. What I disliked was the ‘unforced poverty’ that the performance was meant to display. Nowhere was this the product of a company without a cent, performing out of an organically developed solidarity. This fact was more clearly visible at a festival such as the one in Nancy. It would not be a bad idea if the established theatre and its regular public in the Netherlands were to receive a good shaking up, as occurred with Zadek in Bochum.

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Mémé Perlini and the company La Maschera from Rome transformed Shakespeare’s Othello into a work of modern visual art. There was a spacious stage with some screens, a chair, a wooden crate and a sty with a brightly lit live pig. In front of the stage there was a strip of earth. The performers moved in straight lines and circles. Othello was a naked Negro, who crawled around on his hands and feet, but was gradually clothed, finally to appear in a bridegroom’s tails. The white wedding guests rejected him. Then his bride, Desdemona, lay upon the wedding table as though she were a dead, old herb lady. Iago was a fattish, naked man with sunglasses. There were also wonderful lighting effects and projections, which were coloured on the spot. They were dreamlike images, some of which were very beautiful to observe. But in my case, at least, they did not offer me the slightest access anywhere. I always dream differently. And furthermore I do not like it at all when a container full of living crabs is poured out for fighting performers to roll about in.

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Exodus by the company stu from Cracow offered a little more accessibility. It was a poetic oratorio with wonderful religious pop music. The audience sat on bleachers on both sides of a very long performance area in the half darkness. The performers carried out actions that were intended to be ritualistic. Here too there was evidence of the hand of a great theatre maker, the director Kryzystof Jasinski. The content remained somewhat obscure, with a great deal of (Polish Catholic) symbolism. But some of the images were breathtakingly beautiful. A white angel strode about with enormous wings made of strips of newspaper. Someone set the angel alight with a torch and it slowly strode on further with burning wings (he was protected by asbestos). It was an impressive image that represented the fact that God is dead.

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My heart only really opened up for another performance from Poland: Retrospective by Teatr 77 from Lodz. It began as the opening of an exhibition. Drinks and cocktail snacks were passed around, whilst someone explained what we were going to see: objects, texts and tableaux vivants from past and present Poland. Then the audience was requested to leave the auditorium and was posed a question that could only be answered by yes or no. Is the self-realisation of the individual possible if we reject dogmas, collective thinking and such like? Whoever said yes got to see a play with ‘individuals’; whoever said no went to the ‘dogmatists’. The question was based on the work of the emigrant Polish writer W. Gombrowicz. I personally felt that the question was too difficult and too poorly formulated and I could not give an answer to it. I had to wait until both groups of performers (and the accompanying audiences) were

united and confronted with one another, as though they were at a party conference. A forum of ‘dogmatists’ was seated at a table. Before them stood other Poles from past and present who wished to be themselves. Without my being able to understand a word of Polish I suddenly saw to my great delight how they depicted precisely what occurs everywhere in the world, though perhaps more so in Poland: how helplessly (?) the individual tries to oppose the unshakable rightness of the authorities who think only in compartments and fixed patterns. I could see them all standing there: the [Dutch anarchist movement] the Provos, [their successors] the Gnomes, the action groups, misunderstood, pathetic and inarticulate. This was an extremely moving experience for me. Moreover, the manner in which it was all organised seemed to me to be a useful and worthy attempt to encourage a discussion amongst the audience.

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Two performances took political torture as their subject. Equipo Teatro Payro from Buenos Aires presented El signor Galindez by Eduardo Pavlovsky. Midway through the play a rented room, which was enclosed by chicken wire full of rubber hoses, was transformed into a torture chamber. No actual torture took place, but this made the unpacking of various instruments all the more horrible. The play began very traditionally: with prattle between men. Only gradually, and especially after the arrival of two whores, did you discover the hidden meaning. The men were torturers in the service of this Mister Galindez. In their play Tako tako, by Mirko Kovac, the Pekarna Theater from Ljubljana presented four rooms simultaneously. Above left, a whore received a visit from two lorry drivers who murdered her. Above right, a female lodger came home, ate, washed and went to bed. Below left, there were three old men playing cards. Below right, there was a Solzhenitsyn-like writer typing his memoires. He received a visit from two people from the secret service. They forced him to commit suicide via a third-degree interrogation. There was something going on in each room constantly. The form was not only theatrically interesting but also in terms of content. For example, one could see how a person is able to live in parallel to the horrors of a police state. [...] haarlems dagblad, may 31st 1975

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13 ‘The Concise History of a World Theatre Festival’

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‘Fear and Loathing in Nancy’ We thought that we were the most entertaining thing at the World Jamboree for Young Theatre in Nancy by some margin. Our patrol consisted of Ritsaert ten Cate (Mickery), Michiel Berkel (HP), Jean Paul Bresser (Volkskrant), Lien Heyting (NRC Handelsblad) and Jac Heijer (Haarlems Daglad). Hans Maarten Tromp (De Tijd & Plug) arrived too late to be able to take part; and so he left the festival confused, but with freckles. We were hardly out of each other’s sight. By night, at the festival’s animation centre, the Dragée, which was an old sweet factory. By day, on one of the terraces of the rococo public square, named after the king-duke Stanislas the Benevolent. We often sat at the Commerce or at Lamour, which amounts to the same thing, considering how the prices had been hiked so steeply. We swore to each other that our euphoric gathering deserved to be reported on sooner than all of the theatrical goings-on that we had come for. All the more so because Ten Cate, who truly had seen everything, had insinuated well beforehand that there was little of any real importance going on and what was important had already been brought to the Mickery Theater. He was largely proved right. And so we sat there teasing one another from early in the morning, while we filled up on croissants and tartlets from the nearest patisserie because the bread and butter that Lamour served was too poor for us. When we had dispensed with the daily battle to acquire tickets in Les Docks, we would meet each other in La Pepinière, the café in the park, for our daily Pêche Melba (the tartlet expert Bresser stated: ‘I really should have eaten this much sooner’). Whichever of the five of us arrived last got to hear that the rest of us had already called through our scoops to the press room in the town hall: the festival is defunct; the festival’s founder, Jack Lang, has appropriated the festival’s funds for his private colloquium on French cultural dissemination and other canards. The Mad Drag

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Our dazzling conversation was continually interrupted to allow Ten Cate the opportunity to be hugged by his International Contacts (‘Hello, Ritsaert, how are you – hug hug – Ritsaert have you met Françoise – kiss kiss.’). Heyting and I were busily engaged in our anti-smoking therapy. This consisted of the following: I would snatch the scarcely lit cigarette from her mouth and crumple it before her eyes, even if she had scrounged it off Ten Cate. After this, Ritsaert abandoned his Contacts to restrain Heyting from the Mad Drag. If I were not paying attention to Heyting my-

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self for a moment, distracted as I was by a young boy from New Caledonia, then Ten Cate would run straight across the terrace and knock Heyting’s cigarette from her fingers. But journalists are unreliable in each other’s company because they are afraid to miss anything important that the others may have seen. Therefore we faithfully trudged from performance to performance and compelled each other to exchange experiences for fear of otherwise making fools of ourselves (but to whom, in God’s name?). Berkel wondered why we should write anything at all, given that we all had the same story. After we had returned home it turned out that everyone had really gone to town. Bresser had already written three long pieces and Heyting two. Berkel and Tromp could not be left behind. I seemed to be the patsy; I had satisfied myself with one meagre story and I now realised that I was obliged to even things up after all with a good piece of my own. Visiting performances together proved to be a horror. Heyting was the first to try to get up, or else she had seen enough after ten minutes – which was not unjust – and left the building with a loud commentary – which was unjust. Although you would not be able to discern this from her articles. And though Bresser and I did occasionally give free rein to our impatience during poor performances, the arrogant behaviour of our favourite nevertheless annoyed us so much that a conflict could not be averted. This came on the fifth, and for three of us, final day. During the afternoon there was a reception for Mitterrand in the city theatre, where all too soon the whiskey had taken hold of us. That evening we ate and drank at Muller, a pleasantly run café to the side of Stanislas Square. In addition to the Club of Five, we were joined by Mike Pearson from Cardiff (previously with the RAT Company) and Ruud Engelander (Children of the Night). The quarrel began when Heyting announced that she had been asked to contribute to Hollands Diep, a magazine run by Sleutelaar, from which little good was to be expected. Terribly Angry

No one remembers exactly how the quarrel developed; it was all about snobs, the in-crowd, the profession, theatre criticism, journalism, the readers and theatre makers. What I do remember is that Bresser frequently stood up to jab an accusing finger at Heyting, crying out: ‘Oh oh oh, I am so angry.’ To which Lien replied coolly and bitchily. From time to time Berkel, Pearson and I stood up to explain to the other guests in the restaurant that this was a typical Dutch conversation, and they would be better off not paying any attention to it. Nevertheless, the quarrel flared up so

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loudly that an embarrassed Berkel and I decided to go and see a performance after all. When I had settled the bill and was standing outside the conflict seemed to take hold of me terribly. I leaned against the façade at Muller’s and began to cry. Tears of rage dripped on to the pavement. Berkel had vanished, but Engelander (hastily making his way to his An die Musik) was able to console me. I promised him that I would not do anything crazy and that I would return inside quietly. Sobbing, I explained to Ten Cate and Pearson what had made me so upset: Why should Jan Paul lose this battle because he grew so angry; why must that twat Heyting win because she expresses herself better; why do the ordinary people always lose out to quality; why can I never win, working-class child that I am. But Ten Cate thought that it was all just great: ‘This is the first time that I have heard two Dutch critics going for each other’s throats because of their profession. Great! Great! They cannot go far enough for me!’ Watching from the tear-filled corners of my eyes I observed that Bresser and Heyting were reconciling. Kissing and making up! My hero Bresser even confessed that he had some understanding for Heyting’s point of view. And what about my tears then? Shed for nothing! I have rarely been so deceived in my grief; and moreover the Calvados was slicing through my brain like razors. To conclude our catharsis, we departed to Dragée. Heyting and I reconciled. I sat her on my lap, entirely against my principles, and cherished her greatly. Little Lien recited a verse for me in French about a soldier who had withered in the bud, with a piece of cheese in his mouth. After that I stole her scarf and she completely blew her top. Ten Cate – Everlasting Help and Aid – rescued her from ruin. The following morning on the terrace of Lamour everything was peaceful and hazy. Ten Cate was sitting there with a red wine; I with a hangover; Heyting with a blackout and Bresser with a hydrangea for his wife, in the same colours as his face. Berkel came by car; it was a moving farewell. Ten Cate and I remained behind without offspring. Sad. Mostly because I had a vicious burn on my neck as well as my hangover. Right before our club was convened for the final time I had drunk a cup of coffee and murmured about serious business with Pip Simmons, who was also up bright and early. A few empty seats away, there was an artistic but decent-looking gentleman with a deeply lined face, clearly still drunk and talking in a heated tone. He was intent on having a row with me. But because I didn’t bat an eyelid, he tossed a lit cigarette butt at my neck, after demanding in a challenging tone: ‘What is the present state of Western Culture?’ That evening I danced to Brazilian samba rhythms in Dragée, together with the Spanish refugee José, the German actor Fritz and the Japanese

writer Aya, all of us together around a bottle of red wine, the cheap chemical variety, while around us they were busy tearing the whole place down. toneel teatraal, nr. 5-6, 8th edition, june/july 1975

14 ‘Pioneering Group in Mickery for the Fourth Time’

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‘Theatre of Poetry and Violence by Tenjo Sajiki from Japan’ Amsterdam – For three weeks, the Mickery Theater will be the domain of Tenjo Sajiki, the exciting theatre company from Tokyo, which is in the habit of surprising its viewers with poetical theatre images, but also scares the living daylights out of them with unprecedented violence. The group is here for the fourth time since 1971. After a 32-hour flight from Japan the 30 members of the group immediately set to work last Sunday afternoon till early Monday morning. The group has an iron discipline. Shuji Teyarama, the jack-of-all-arts who has led the group since the beginning in 1967, is the undisputed master. His word is law. Every member of the group – extremely young people for the most part – knows exactly what he or she must do. The construction of a complicated system of tubes, on which curtains are hung, is carried out quickly and soundlessly. In the theatre’s courtyard, long and short nails are hammered into various props: shoes, a chair, a wheel and a dog made of artificial material. The production is called Bandage [sic] and has been made especially for the Mickery Theater. It will premiere this evening. The preparation has been going on for some time. Mickery’s Ritsaert ten Cate was given a long shopping list including: a 1200cc motor that ‘can be started, regulated and is able to make a lot of noise’, various chests ‘made of cedar or some similar sort of wood; please don’t use triplex’, 58 metres of steel tubing, 20 pulley weights, an amplifier, an echo chamber, a gong, a drum set, an electric organ, two tape recorders, 10 hammers, 10 kg of nails of 10cm, 5 kg of nails of 5cm and 5 kg of 3.5 cm in length. For Teyarama, it is nail season. In June he presented a production in Tokyo called A Journal of the Plague Year. Bandage is based on it. The motto of A Journal is a quote from the English writer Daniel Defoe: ‘The doors of all of the houses where victims of the plague lived, were nailed shut. And a new world was begun behind those doors’. Teyarama is obsessed with that ‘new world’. Two years ago, at a theatre festival in the Polish city of Wroclaw, he had the auditorium doors of the extremely smart Polski Teatr nailed shut as soon as the audience had sat down. (Wroclaw has still not got over the shock). In short, Tenjo Sajiki remains ‘vely expelimental’ as Teyarama expressed it to Ten Cate.

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In the first three years of its existence Teyarama’s theatre developed quickly. The company began with poetic dramas, in which hunchbacks, dwarves and giants appeared. Teyarama uses something similar in his new film Pastoral Hide and Seek, which will premiere this week in The Movies in Amsterdam. The film was finished last year. Following the poetry came the everyday truth, bearing the slogan: ‘All people are actors’. This is a consequence of what the Dutch playwright Vondel wrote: ‘The world is a stage. Each plays his role and is given his share’. People off the street were placed on stage; the message was: ‘Ban all professional actors from the stage’. Consequently, Tenjo Sajiki broke with the theatre as the place of performance. A play such as The Crime of Dr. Caligari began in the rooms of an ordinary house, where the audience was confronted with criminal incidents. Every spectator had to determine his own standpoint in relation to such incidents. Tenjo Sajiki also did something similar in The Opium War (which was in Mickery three years ago), in which visitors came to blows with performers, provoked as they were by, for example, the throwing of live chickens. With other plays, the audience was taken out onto the street; a neighbourhood of Tokyo became a complete theatre, in which the police had to take an unwilling part in a game of hide-and-seek with the performers. In short, as the group says: ‘We were like ghosts who came and went in the empty lives of the inhabitants of the city and we tore down the wall between appearance and reality.’ One of the plays from this period, Man Powered Plane Solomon, was performed in Sonsbeek during the Holland Festival in 1971. In 1969 the group was at Experimenta in Frankfurt. But their big breakthrough to the world outside Japan came in 1971. The festival in Nancy invited the group, and since then it has been impossible to imagine the international theatre market without them. After Nancy, Ten Cate immediately brought the group to the Mickery Theater, which was then still in Loenersloot. At the time they were performing Jashumon, the first production of what Teyarama called ‘invisible theatre’, in which the stage design and the music are the most important elements. The aim of Jashumon was to transform the audience into a crowd and the theatre into an open square. The actors were ‘operated’ as marionettes by authoritarian ‘puppeteers’; the actors wanted the audience to eliminate these manipulators, and thereby overthrow the established theatre. This did not succeed in Europe, at any rate, because no one understood a word of it. Although the objective was radically anti-authoritarian, Tenjo Sajiki does not wish its drama to be the guard dog of a political ideology. Since 1971, the Mickery Theater has become Tenjo Sajiki’s pied-a-terre in Europe.

At the moment the group is busy exploring the possibilities of ‘invisible theatre’, perhaps better described as ‘theatre in the dark’. This is leading to a new direction: theatre in the ‘secret room’ or the ‘private room’. The conceiver of all of this is the 40-year-old Teyarama, who was three years old when he fell down the stairs and eight when he wrote his first poem, or so his career record tells. His father died of alcoholism; his mother had a great influence over him, which he has tried to write off in a poetry collection that he last year adapted into the film Pastoral Hide and Seek. He has not only written Waka poetry (each verse containing 31 syllables), but also novels and some 230 plays and scripts, which Tenjo Sajiki has performed. Furthermore, he is a filmmaker (9 films), sports commentator and critic, and a popular tipster for the horse races in Tokyo. His poems and a novel have been translated into English and French; he took part in the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam in 1971. In spite of the just worldwide recognition for this artist, Teyarama and his group still belong to the unofficial sub-culture in Japan. november 12th 1975

15 ‘Report of a Romance’

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‘10 Years of Mickery’ I have always been mad about theatre. At least since we performed the whole of Joseph in Dothan by Vondel in the sixth grade at our desks in the village primary school, if not earlier (now that was artistic education). But becoming a reviewer was the last thing I ever considered. After all, drama was something elevated and national criticism was something that you needed to have studied for. I thought that everything that those lady and gentleman actors placed before the footlights was wonderful. As long as it moved and could be understood, I felt that it was brilliant and the reviews by Daniël de Lange were the final word. In short, it was Art, which was unreachable for a simple soul. Meanwhile, I had become a reporter and I had boat launches and council meetings on my mind. Then, at the end of 1969, the Tomato Action took place, a phenomenon amongst the various artistic protests that were inspired by the student revolt in Paris in 1968. l’Imagination au pouvoir! This cry appealed to me, but I did not see any more in it than press coverage. Just like art, the actions were something that you had to have studied for. You watched it as a reporter of the old school, curious but generally respectful and with no personal attachment. I understood little of the finer points of the Tomato Action. Therefore, I would never in my life have written reviews if Mickery had not existed.

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Our steady courtship has now endured for five and a half years and if the subsidisers do not do Mickery in, then we will celebrate our 25-year devoted engagement together. The romance began, as is fitting, by chance. One night in the metropolitan establishment, DOK, I was dancing with a black American, who suddenly had to leave. He had to drive actors to Loenersloot, he said. He was also an actor, yeah, and belonged to a company called La MaMa or some such. Never heard of them, no, nor Mickery either. He invited me to see the show and the next evening I was there. The actor was performing in Rat’s Mass, a play by Adrienne Kennedy about a black brother and sister, who were driven crazy by a bullying white girl neighbour. Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Three Wise Men also took part and at the end they were transformed into Nazis who shot down the black people. Catholics, Nazis, racists and whites were all identical. It was performed fantastically. I sat there staring at it and could not discover anything false. It was not merely pretence. A World Opened Up. Actors revealed what they personally felt and thought. The subject concerned things that you read about every day in the newspaper. And all this on a small floor in a converted stable with some lighting and scarcely any décor. There was a friendly atmosphere at the farm. There was a crackling wood fire in what was called the foyer; and all sorts of steps and alcoves for seating. The centre point of this Gooi regional self-assurance and Amsterdam Bohemia was a big, odd fellow, with a bare face and a student-like, but still unapproachable, authority, whose good birth hung around him like the strange sheepdog that ran around silently. This fellow was named Ritsaert ten Cate and the dog Tromp. La MaMa’s performers were sweet and warm-hearted, and generous with their embraces and kisses. They showed us where they slept in cubicles in the farm’s attic. I had to come back and watch the rehearsals, where a beautiful girl sang blues songs by Billie Holiday with precisely the right timbre. We picnicked in the orchard on the sparse patches of grass, which had been left over by the regular visitors’ cars. And in the evening we drove to hot in The Hague in two buses, smoking hash on the way. There I saw Ubu (after Jarry) and Arden of Faversham (an unknown Elizabethan play). The former was funnier and the latter harder and crueller than anything that I had ever seen on stage. After two days, I returned to my newspaper with my head in the clouds, repeated everything to my colleagues and suddenly realised that I might just as well write an article about it. And so it began. Crash Course 222

Every two weeks, on Tuesdays, I rode the bus from Haarlem to Loenersloot for two hours to once again see something that I had never seen before. Ten

Cate remained great and distant, the dog continued to desist from barking and every performance, in addition to being a crash course in watching theatre, was first and foremost a feast. When Mickery moved to its most logical location of Amsterdam in 1972, I thought that things would never go well. It was nonsense of course. Wherever the world citizen, Ten Cate, goes he can create an atmosphere around him in which you accept the new as something simple, something that should always have existed. His fine nose for quality, extensive knowledge of affairs and sincere hospitality in his dealings, rather than mere public relations, have never abandoned him. Whether he was at home in the Mickery Theater amongst his staff, who have become a family to him, or at foreign festivals, where Ten Cate is the most hugged figure, and who always visits the mute workers behind the scenes with a bottle of whiskey under his arm, to offer them his encouragement. Ritsaert ten Cate stems from one of the textile barons in Twente. His father sent him to England to study economics. There, he played truant and absorbed everything that could be experienced on the fringes of British theatre. ‘Water always follows its own course’, he offered by way of explanation. His mother is a daughter of Eduard Verkade. She has seen just about all of the 265 shows that Mickery has presented over the past ten years. Ten Cate began the Mickery Theater in 1965. He had experienced enough of the frustrations caused by his work at Chanowski’s Productions (‘nice work, but it was a commercial company’). He encountered many Dutch actors who complained so much that they could not do anything of their own anywhere. He had space for this sort of work at his farm.

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Drag

Thus, one of the first productions was Jean Genet’s The Maids by Henk van Ulsen, Hans Culeman and Eric van den Donk in drag. However, it rapidly became apparent that the interest of Dutch actors was much less than Ten Cate had expected. Evidently, the sacred flame of working without a cent of subsidy was absent. Dutch theatre was made up almost entirely of established greats and conventions. The members of the young generation, who have made a name for themselves over the last couple of years, were still at school or saw absolutely no way of making clear what was going on inside themselves or the world around them by making their own theatre. Mickery was the first institution, after the theatre company Studio (which had begun to run aground precisely at this time), that demonstrated many more possibilities than the Dutch tradition had always wished for. And so Ten Cate tapped into the foreign market for new theatre, even before it had realised that it was a market. He has tens of ‘discoveries’ to his

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credit, or has otherwise contributed to the worldwide fame of various companies. These came and went: there was love-making, crying, rows; they continued to be friends of Mickery for longer or shorter periods – success and money spoiled many relationships – disagreement divided or destroyed companies. What is more important for the progeny is that Mickery has presented a number of important movements. Experiments within the classical theatre form comprised one of these, with Serban’s magical ­classics and the elegant decadence of tse as the outstanding representatives. In recent times the political theatre from England has become a gauge, which Lay Off by John McGrath by the company 7:84 is the best example of.

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Manipulation

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Nevertheless, the most important movement for Mickery and for Ten Cate personally is the one that deliberately manipulates the audience and forces it to immediately adopt a personal standpoint. Two theatre makers have had the most influence in this respect: Pip Simmons and Shuji Terayama. Simmons’ company has been a regular guest at the Mickery Theater for years. The show Do It!, based on the anarchic book by the American Yippie Jerry Rubin (in which the performers literally take hold of the audience by the short and curlies) and the gripping An die Musik, the metaphorical work about a concentration camp orchestra, most clearly illustrate how roughly Simmons tears the observer from the safety of the darkness, and presses their nose against reality. Terayama and his Tenjo Sajiki manipulate the audience with more subtlety and surrealistic theatrical images, whereby they elicit an experience from them that goes deeper than realism. The duo of Wim T. Schippers and Misha Mengelberg has also worked in Mickery within this style. Clearly inspired by the methods of Simmons and Terayama, Ritsaert ten Cate, in his own productions, has developed the insight that everyday reality has much in common with rituals, with theatre. He searches for opportunities that equip theatre (which tends towards a self-satisfied inbreeding even in the avant-garde) with a breakthrough to normal life. Fairground, which was produced by the Mickery Theater earlier this year, was the first result of this. The audience was transported around the theatre in three cubes on hovercraft motors and watched scenes being performed, as well as film and reality (a market vendor, for example). It was still unpretentious fairground amusement, but the means employed were so new and unused that there must be a sequel. The project did not limit itself to the three cubes. Before and after, a variety of things occurred in the foyer and around the theatre that imperceptibly placed the audience in

situations in which it was obliged to drop its guard: such as written questionnaires and interviews to cameras without film.

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Report

In a 1973 report, Remain seated where you are and don’t disturb yourself?, which has even been forgotten by the subsidisers, Ten Cate explains in detail what direction he would like to take. Mickery would have to programme less of what it had presented in previous years. There was not as much taking place amongst the avant-garde as in the period around 1970, and the regular Mickery audience was perhaps becoming a little blasé with all of the new. In Ten Cate’s opinion, Mickery should increasingly present the new possibilities of media other than theatre; for example, video and film. Furthermore, Ten Cate wished to put into practice his ideas about reality theatre as mentioned above. The proposal that goes the farthest is for a completely new kind of festival: ‘A number of foreign companies should be commissioned to jointly design a theatrical mini-state as a critical reflection of reality. Madurodam (the model miniature city) as a living theatrical means to achieve this, or perhaps another, world.’ In this mini-state the audience would be manipulated in such a way that it would have to organise itself in order to hold its own and search out solutions on the spot to the very real problems that it encountered. Subsidisers still give the impression that they underestimate Mickery. Up until 1969 Ten Cate had invested his own money, to thereafter apply for subsidy. Fortunately, this was awarded to him, perhaps without the subsidisers realising the consequences (for example, the sharply rising travel costs for distant companies). In recent years, Mickery has once again seemed to have to defend its right to existence in the most minute detail. This is true for just about all theatre makers, by the way, and this is right. But it is ridiculous that it is precisely the individual who refuses to sit still and rest on his laurels, and who consistently wishes to innovate, who is met with resistance that seems to stem from disinterest and laxity. Unread reports, unstudied visitor’s questionnaires and letters that are either answered too late or never, are the proof of this. (The Theatre Union from De Brakke Grond has encountered the same difficulty.) English

Could this have something to do with the fact that Mickery presents foreign imports, as a result of which the audience is limited primarily to those who might be expected to understand a little English? At first glance it seems to be a legitimate reproach. But at least it has taught me that theatre, as it is presented in Mickery, speaks a language that is so simple, so emotional and so genuine that it outshines all language barriers. Of the

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145 productions that I have seen there, more than half were above the standard that is usual in the Netherlands. Some thirty were important and there were at least seven that I will not forget for the rest of my life. Mickery has become a norm by which you can better judge Dutch theatre. Not because Mickery is fashionable, but because it shows more successfully and extensively what can be taken from reality than is the case with most home-grown products. The influence of Mickery on the content of Dutch theatre is not immediately demonstrable. But it goes further than the fact that so many new small theatres have been created that sometimes make use of the same seats and often the same programming politics. The sorely needed innovations in our theatre that began after the Tomato Action originated with the Dutch theatre makers themselves. And this is how it should be. But the climate – to use a cliché – that made possible the innovations (many more companies with many more performances) is in large part, although not entirely, due to Mickery. You might ask yourself whether the Mickery Theater might not continue to survive after ten years. This will certainly be the case if it does not receive the opportunity to take a new direction, as Ten Cate had already outlined two years ago. haagse post, december 13th 1975

16 ‘Jac Heijer Shares Out Prize Amongst Theatre World’

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‘Bayle Prize 1974 for “Born Critic”” (From our arts editorial staff)

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On Saturday afternoon our theatre editor Jac Heijer was awarded the Pierre Bayle Prize 1974, for the theatre sector. [...] ‘Theatre must flourish if theatre criticism is to prosper’, stated the jury report. Between now and 1967, when the previous Pierre Bayle Prize for theatre criticism was awarded, great changes have occurred in the theatre world: ‘The critic can make a constructive contribution to a climate in which the theatre aims to repair the shaken trust of the public. Jac Heijer is an example of someone who has retained his faith in theatre’, the jury report continues. In the opinion of the jury, our editor satisfies the demands that have been set to qualify for the Pierre Bayle Prize. These include a clear and wellstructured style, the performance of a constructive task (namely that the critic in question would rather encourage the public to go to the theatre than deter them) and also the offer of hope for the future of theatre. In a personal statement, Mrs. Treves referred to our editor as ‘a born

critic who sets about his work carefully and possesses a judgement of value’. In the opinion of the jury member, ‘he is a man who, in intense subjectivity, practices the greatest objectivity’. ‘I was pretty apprehensive about getting this award’, Jac Heijer revealed in his acceptance speech, ‘in case I were seen “as a mandarin” in the same way as W.F. Hermans. I write for the readers and I try to explain to them what I have experienced. It is all about the public and not the professionals who already know so well what the meaning of a play is.’ ‘I could never have written’, our editor continued, ‘if Mickery had not existed. Some things occurred there a few years ago that overcame me with the same intensity as a world disaster. And I could also never have written if I had not been at a newspaper that offers so much space to the arts.’ Following which he addressed the somewhat pessimistic mood of the afternoon; because various speakers had expressed their criticism of the policy that many (national) newspapers have adopted in regards to criticism of the arts. In his closing words, Jac Heijer called for a different manner of government subsidisation than automatism. ‘More money should be made available for modernised theatre.’ And then, backing up his words with his actions, our editor announced that he would share out his prize (a sum of 2,500 guilders) amongst the suffering avant-garde theatres, in the symbolic amount of 1 guilder per company, naming the examples of Mickery, GL-2, Proloog, Onafhankelijk Toneel and also Willem Breuker and Misha Mengelberg. haarlems dagblad, december 15th 1975

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1976 17 ‘Pip Simmons Theatre Group Re-opens Mickery’ ‘Sarcastic Perspective on Humanity’ The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Company: Pip Simmons Theatre Group. Music: Chris Jordan. Performers (leading roles): Sheila Burnett, Roderic Leigh. Seen in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. The Mickery Theater has once again opened its doors. The theatre is more or less assured of sufficient national and municipal subsidy to continue this year. The director Ritsaert ten Cate has raced halfway around the world like a hare to conclude contracts. Yesterday, after a month and a half

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of silence, the first performance began: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Pip Simmons’ famous group from London. A high point. Last season Simmons’ group worked in Rotterdam. There, they called themselves Children of the Night and presented two productions Dracula, an entertaining horror spectacle and An die Musik. This latter performance was about a Jewish orchestra in a concentration camp; it was a metaphor about degradation and ruin, and it was a physically gripping performance, the most important performance of the Dutch theatre season. Over the last few months the group has performed it in England, where the most progressive critics considered it to be the best-directed work of the year. In the last few weeks it has also been presented in Paris where the critics were equally enthusiastic. An die Musik caused a real Parisian theatre riot. One of the first performances was interrupted by a handful of Maoists, who felt that An die Musik did injustice to the historical philosophy of Mao. The actors halted the performance and promised a discussion, following which the Maoists and the rest of the audience entered into a vehement discussion that even led to a scuffle. When Simmons, the performers and the Maoists commenced their discussion a few days later it was interrupted by a group of Marxists that had got wind of the colloquy. Simmons had barely begun his explanation when the Marxists and the Maoists forgot about An die Musik and began ferociously debating dialectics and the discussion itself. One thing after another drew the attention of the newspapers. The communist paper L’Humanité devoted a great deal of attention to it and wiped the floor with the Maoists. The result was a sold-out theatre every evening. The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is quite different to An die Musik, although in a certain sense it is a sequel. Children of the Night are now called Children of the Sun, which suggests a much lighter tone. This is only partly the case. The Dream is the answer of a man who, in fact, had already given his ultimate interpretation of ‘human deficiency’ in An die Musik. What remains when you have said everything about the degradation and murder perpetrated by one person upon another? At the very least some pessimistic doubt as to whether things will ever turn out well for humanity. Simmons gives this doubt an ironic, and in my opinion even a sarcastic, form, based on a short story by Dostoyevsky known in this country as The Suicide. The principal character in the story is a ridiculous schlemiel who dreams that he has committed suicide and so gets to know paradise. Simmons gives this paradise the form of happy Hawaiian kitsch, which turns into a hideous nightmare. In the nightmare the ridiculous man is scorned and renounced like Jesus on the cross. In the hands of Pip Simmons and his personnel, the dream assumes

the form of a musical, with various elements from the world of show business. Roderic Leigh is such a moving ridiculous man that he reduces one to tears, while he is surrounded by all of the other performers, who dance, sing and act as though they are in an old fashioned music hall. The play is not only a commentary on humanity, but also on religion and theatre. The play is so full of double meanings that I would not have enough space to minutely analyse it all here, even if I could. The music by Pip Simmons’ faithful musician Chris Jordan is a mixture of references from Paul Anka-like rock music and the Anglican Church. It is excellently performed by the actors themselves, perhaps with a little too much amplification. The entire performance is as rich as it is compact and achieves an impressive equilibrium between irony and seriousness. Pip Simmons and his group create a heart-rending sort of theatre that is truly new and unseen. This is all the more evident following the turbulent years around 1970, now that the theatre has returned to familiar traditions and conventions and at best merely gives new form to old works. haarlems dagblad, january 29th 1976

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18

Folter Folli es

Amsterdam – You have to pay careful attention at Folter Follies [trans. Torture Follies], a large-scale production by Ritsaert ten Cate in the Mickery Theater. What actually takes place is simple enough; nobody could have any difficulty with that. But what you chiefly have to pay attention to is the manner in which you react yourself, an unusual assignment for a theatre audience. The performance seems to be about torture. But the real subject concerns the inner mechanism with which we process reports about atrocities. Ten Cate implies that we consume cases of torture like a pleasant TV quiz show on a Saturday evening. He even insinuates that we would be quite prepared to join in as long as the torture is presented as an official radio or television advertisement. Folter Follies is presented as a friendly tv entertainment programme. It takes place on a platform over the entire length of the auditorium. The audience sits on both sides. Some ten figures dressed entirely in black, with gleaming sunglasses on their stern-looking faces, keep an eye on the audience during the performance, when they are not busy carrying on props or taking part in this or that part of the play. Their presence reminds one that the entertainment that is being presented is not all that amusing. A similar sort of effect is created by the projection of photos of victims of torture on an elongated screen hanging above the platform. One can see the programmes that are being broadcast from Hilversum (the media cen-

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tre of the Netherlands) on two television sets. Anyone who feels bored can always watch these. The actual programme begins with an advertisement that recommends a suit with the brand name New Force. Little boxes are handed out to the audience. They turn out to contain shards of glass. Then a fashion show follows; everyday figures in everyday clothes walk across the platform, with three brides at the close. The audience is told, however, that these clothes are worn by executioners and torturers. Without a single word of protest the audience swallows the suggestion. And this whilst the presenter – an extremely nice American called Bob Carroll – actively invites the audience to respond out loud. Additionally, a real doctor is asked to give a genuine reading on the subject of pain. We get to see a quiz with people from the audience, two cases of torture (whereby the presenter reassuringly cries out that it is all fake), an artistically responsible piece of experimental theatre (whereby it is stated that torture can look very beautiful) and to conclude a sparkling nightclub act by a knife thrower and his luscious assistant. The quiz is extremely mean and dirty. Two of the audience members that are ready and willing, are placed on exercise bicycles and have to cycle for points. When their time is up, they turn out to have generated electricity to torture a victim with electric shocks, who is brought in naked on a torture table. None of the participants questioned what their laborious cycling was for. And there was indignation amongst the audience at the fact that one of the two exercise bicycles was broken: the handlebars kept toppling over and the saddle kept slipping down. And the presenter did absolutely nothing about it! It then emerged that the girl on the defective home trainer contributed much less to the torture than the other person, who cycled furiously. This work of experimental theatre portrays a scary man on very tall clogs, who tortures a person who is tied up in a sack with a fork, amongst other things. He also requests assistance from the audience. However, in contrast to the charming Bob Carroll, he gets hardly any cooperation from the auditorium. He looks much too horrifying. The two audience members that he finally drives silly enough to get up on stage, do not however have to do anything more than observe the tortured man. I sat and watched the various scenes of torture thinking that they could all have been conducted in a much more shocking and exciting way. I found them to be dull. But what am I saying? Dull? How could I think that, when you ought to know that torture is appalling? The more innocent, the duller, the better. And so Folter Follies is full of this sort of ambiguity. Even someone who has absolutely no interest in the show and just watches the TV could, at a

given moment, ask themselves, slightly bewildered, why it is that they are not interested. Ten Cate is passionately interested in human behaviour and wants to use theatre to make us consider our own conduct. Not by putting on a play that we watch to satisfy our artistic feelings and make a possible connection to reality. In Folter Follies, more than in his previous production Fairground (in which the audience were conveyed past cheerful scenes, in big cubes on air cushions), he tries to fathom our behaviour and our indifference, using the members of the audience as active participants. He succeeds magnificently in Folter Follies with this sort of thing, even if I do feel that the contrast between what you see and what is suggested could have been accentuated more forcefully. He overly assumes that the audience is prepared to revise its own experience mechanism, almost of its own accord. Ten Cate may have borrowed the form that gives shape to this programme from all sorts of previously tried theatrical expressions, but he succeeds in applying them in an entirely different manner in the theatre. This is unique. Aside from this, Folter Follies is also the work of a man who has seen an awful lot of theatre and just as many audience reactions. He can read the mechanism of the theatregoer like no other, and from this perspective is now attempting to show us our reactions. Folter Follies is not only about our response to torture, it is also a critique of the theatre and in particular the audience. It was a bang on my head. trouw, april 15th 1976

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‘Chekhov’s Th r ee Sisters Stripped of All Dramatics’

The Hungarian theatre commune, the Elephant Theatre, which emigrated to Paris eight months ago, is back in the Mickery Theater. The company was in Amsterdam earlier this year but had to break off a series of performances at the time because a few visas had not been arranged. They are now putting on an abridged version of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. In the play, the sisters from the Russian provinces circa 1900 are men, but they are not in drag. They sit together, wearing white trousers and shirts, on a small stage that is covered with a Kashmir rug. ‘Irina’ sits on a chair, ‘Olga’ on a stool and ‘Masja’ on the ground. In front of them is a shabby suitcase with a tea set on it. They drink from the cups of tea, but they drink rather more vodka and smoke slender cigars. All three of them wear glasses to illustrate their short-sightedness. ‘Olga’ has a primer on her knees. ‘Irina’ stands up a couple of times. Nothing further happens.

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No Performance

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Every clause is read out to the three men by a prompter in a cubicle at the side of the stage. The texts concern the father, the brother, the future sister-in-law, ‘Masja’s’ confession that she is in love with a married man and then, finally, ‘Irina’ and ‘Olga’ deliver the famous closing dialogue, in which questions are posed concerning the meaning of life. The actors do not perform at all. They repeat the text without emotion. I am so happy today, ‘Irina’ says. You cannot see it. I am so in love, says ‘Masja’. But she does not show any trace of it. I am not listening, says ‘Olga’ and she lays her hand comfortingly on ‘Masja’s’ shoulder. And for the rest, there are long silences. But it is precisely because there is no display of emotion involved that the play reaches the core of the infinite boredom and frustration of Chekhov’s tragi-comic figures. The drama is stripped of all dramatics, the boredom is literal, but it is as if you hear Chekhov’s own voice in this paradoxical tableau vivant. It is a pity (but logical) that the text is in Hungarian. The ironical effect does not come across immediately. But a Dutch translation (from French) is printed in the programme. It is a shame that they did not use the translation by Charles B. Timmer for this. I do not want to suggest that the Elephant Theatre assumes to know the ultimate way of performing Chekhov. One of the performers, Peter Halasz does not refer to it as anything more than an idea. It is an idea that demands a strictly personal reaction from the observer. There are two options: either you walk away in boredom or you remain sitting where you are, watching with fascination. I have seen it three times and find it unforgettable. I could revel in that endless sadness and the shut-off longing for happiness. nrc handelsblad, september 15th 1976

1977 20 ‘Pure Horror in Spiritual Squat by the Squat Theatre’ Pig, Child, Fire! Company: Squat Theatre. Seen March 20th in Van Oldenbarneveltstraat 129, Rotterdam.

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Rotterdam – There is little to be said about the remains of the 19th-century Van Oldenbarneveltstraat (behind the Rotterdam City Playhouse). It will previously have been more stylish; the tram passes through it. The façade

of number 129 consists of a shop window with a door next to it. The building is occupied by the Hungarian theatre commune, Squat, which left Budapest last year to live in Paris under the name Elephant Theatre. Ritsaert ten Cate brought the company to the Mickery Theater. The Rotterdam Theatre Council has granted Squat the opportunity to show work outside the theatre that is more characteristic of the life led by the commune (three men, two women, two children and their following), than we are inclined to understand under the term theatre. Squat’s work is identical to its life and identical to its art. The company does honour to its new name. One meaning of the English word ‘squat’ is to obtain entry and occupy, in this case not of a house, but our spiritual home, where we live in spite of ourselves, namely: the bourgeois culture. It is against this culture that the project Pig, Child, Fire! carries out an assault. It consists of five parts, which are mutually connected in a manner that cannot immediately be pinpointed but is nevertheless exciting, whether this is because of the form, or because of the content. The audience sits on benches at the back of the space and looks out through the shop window. In this way the street, the tram and the passers-by form the décor. Whenever the passers-by stop and look inside, their very presence forms a commentary on what is taking place in the space. This has a surrealistic effect, with a suggestive simplicity. The passers-by take part in the proceedings. Yet, because they remain unaware of this, you suddenly see them as the image of the alienated society. The incidental reality of this section of the Van Oldenbarneveltstraat acquires a broader significance. This wonderful effect is intensified because the passers-by are also displayed on a video screen in the space where the audience sits.

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Amoral

The first two parts of Pig, Child, Fire! depict the amoral obscenity of the crime world. The first part is (Eastern) European; the second part is American in character. While a woman reads aloud from The Demons by Dostoyevsky, a dwarf goat bleats, a dark man in a combat jacket stands outside looking in and a red-haired hanged person appears from the arse of a gigantic doll, which is its likeness. In the second part, two gangsters step from a sled on the street. Inside, a whore sits behind a window. All three draw revolvers and begin to shoot. A series of murders follows that would be comical if they were not performed in slow motion. The gangster boss proves to be invulnerable and continues to sow death and destruction, whilst the tram drives along and the passers-by, at most, cast an interested glance on the scene inside.

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After the interval, the terrifying, yet beautiful horror is put into perspective by the commune members’ two children. They sit at the table eating and talking with one of the women. There is also a television set on the table, which the spectators are portrayed on one by one. A mood of relaxed hilarity reigns. Following this, a woman reads out a letter from 1947 from the French writer-actor Antonin Artaud to the surrealist André Breton. This letter provides us with both the influence and the explanation for this work by the theatre commune. The form in which the quotation from this letter takes place is also disconcerting; a camera observes the woman between the legs, and this is projected on the tv screens. The closing scene presents two carpenters. One of them cuts a piece of glass in two. The other picks up a piece of it in a newspaper and walks outside. The project is surrealism in its most pure form, namely a total rejection, in form and content, of what is held to be true. Without being an expert on Dostoyevsky or Artaud, you can still feel what is meant in every section. I found it to be a shocking, sometimes threatening experience, but above all I held my breath at the combination of beauty and tension. [...] NRC Handelsblad, March 21st 1977

21 ‘Vox Populi, Vox Dei: Canonisation of Leader Van Agt’

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei, the reconstruction of a canonisation; a Mickery production, based on an idea and directed by Ritsaert ten Cate. Texts: Ben Bos, Max van Rooy, Gert Dekkers and Tom Blokdijk, amongst others. Principle performers: Andrew Dallmeyer, William Duffy-Griffin, Huib Verstegen.

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Amsterdam – Over the last few months, mysterious posters have sprung up in Amsterdam consisting of simple texts in capital letters. It is the work of the ‘free paster’ and his epigones. What is certain is that the texts ‘I am profoundly convinced’ and ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God’ do not derive directly from the free paster. They belong to a great mystification around the Mickery production Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The real foundation Media Mundi is also part of this, including the ‘Commission for Positive Tendencies Van Agt’, which has garnered approval by means of advertisements. These ‘overwhelming, intense, positive’ reactions served as ‘evidence at the proceedings for the canonisation of  Van Agt’. [‘Dries’ van Agt was subsequently Christian Democrat Appeal

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party Prime Minister of the Netherlands, 19 December 1977–4 November 1982.] The performance is part of Ritsaert ten Cate’s series of studies in manipulation. Ten Cate is of the opinion that people are capable of anything, provided they are manipulated in the correct way. The means for achieving this include the media, politics and not least, theatre. The first production in the series was Fairground, in which the audience was driven around the theatre in big cubes, past theatrical and other activities. The second was called Folter Follies, a sort of quiz evening, in which it turned out that unsuspecting participants from the audience were uncritically contributing to torture. Television interviews, film recordings and questionnaires heightened the effect that the audience was involved in a real situation. The audience was not merely the onlooker of the portrayal of an event, as is usually the case in the theatre. The spectator was asked to be on guard and continually critically evaluate what was seen. There was more opportunity in this regard with Folter Follies than with Fairground. It was to be expected that Ten Cate would continue in this line. But I could not discover it in his newest production. Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a spectacle that does not even have the semblance of reality, despite the use of such elements as video interviews and the collection of money by nuns. The spectator is sometimes steered into certain situations with a light touch, but this has no other consequence than participation in a little game. As a spectacle Vox Populi, Vox Dei has attractive aspects. An ecclesiastical court is in session in a white marble décor, in which nuns dressed in lilac and prelates trot on or off at convenient or inconvenient moments. Sometimes the outward piety has a hidden meaning; at the beginning of the performance a striptease takes place in the courtroom’s back room for less than 49 spectators. An excellent image of Roman Catholic hypocrisy. The performance consists chiefly of a dialogue between two ministers: one who wishes to declare Van Agt a saint, and another, who wishes to prevent that. Both functionaries play a well-defined role; that of prosecutor and advocate in an American court case. The actors, Andrew Dallmeyer and William Duffy-Griffin (a second Charles Laughton), do this with great verve. Over the last few months I have already heard, at exhaustive length, the arguments for and against Van Agt, which are here offered via witness statements. The play was prepared at a time when everyone thought that Van Agt would succeed. This did not turn out to be the case. Yet still I was curious about the second part, in which the attitude of the Dutch was to be dealt with, a majority of whom would like to see a man like Van Agt as national leader. Unfortunately, this part went up, as it were,

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in incense. So many things occurred, which I wanted to pay attention to, that the argumentation (the play is performed in English) escaped me. It is a shame, given the great amount of work that the sizeable group of personnel conducted with so much pleasure and dedication. nrc handelsblad. june 4th 1977

22 ‘Pip Simmons’s Poe is Parable of Theatre Art’

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The Masque of the Red Death after Edgar Allen Poe, a Mickery production by The Pip Simmons Theatre Group. Direction: Pip Simmons. Music: Chris Jordan. Stage design: based on an idea by Ritsaert ten Cate and developed by Frans de la Haye and Dick Johnson. In the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, to September 26th, except Monday. Amsterdam, September 8th – The artist is one of the living dead. Art is a rabbit magically pulled from a top hat; a dead, skinned rabbit. The audience are rats gnawing at this cadaver. With these cheerful images, The Pip Simmons Theatre Group ushers you into the new season. Simmons presents a strictly personal vision in all of his work. He never reproduces the literary details that he usually bases his work on; he is a creative artist with a strange love-hate relationship with his medium, theatre. The Masque of the Red Death, which Simmons’ group of performers-musicians is currently presenting together with Mickery, is perhaps not his most even work, but it does go further than previous projects. The ingeniously organised, varied show appears on first impression to be about the work and person of Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). Every visitor is given a white cape, a cap and a mask at the Mickery cloakroom. After the prologue in the foyer you can see scenes that are derived from Poe’s work in the different spaces in the theatre: The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven. These are also the hallucinations of the drink and opium-addicted writer, who is swept away in the maelstrom of his Puritan morality and his perverse behaviour. The first scenes are unclear and lack compelling power. But as soon as the group gets more of an opportunity to use its slyly insinuating performance style, you become increasingly involved in the events. 236

Beautiful and Sick

The scenes resemble what is said of Poe’s female characters: they are beautiful and always sick. But Simmons does more. On each occasion, when an image threatens to become fascinated by decadence, he opposes it with the crudest Grand Guignol effects: much fake blood, many large buttocks, live rats, lopped-off fingers, not even the trick with the sawn-in-half orphan girl is left out (Poe himself is sawn in two). With deliberate bad taste Simmons not only vulgarises Poe, but also the still-extant notion that the artist may be debauched as long as he produces beautiful art. When, during his Last Supper following an exalted speech about art, Poe magically pulls the skinned rabbit out of his hat, Simmons is really talking about himself and the sort of avant-garde theatre that he has been making for ten years. The same double meaning is evident in the closing scenes. Poe is buried alive in the back garden of the Mickery Theater. He watches you from his coffin, his hand wipes off the condensed glass lid, his red-painted mouth forms words and rats crawl around him. Being buried alive is one of Poe’s main themes. Moreover, as a participant in the funeral ceremony you understand that here lies Art. The apotheosis takes place in the Upper Auditorium [Bovenzaal]. Poe appears once more as a speaking corpse. When he disappears you turn around and see a great glass cage, in which there is a half-decomposed doll, which tens of rats crawl over while gnawing at the skinned rabbit. I quickly took off my white habit. I resembled those rats too closely.

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Parable

Once I had realised that The Masque of the Red Death is a parable for the theatre art, I understood better why Simmons had stolen so many stylistic devices from the avant-garde theatre of the last ten years. I recognised the Japanese group Tenjo Sajiki, and work by Franz Marijnen and the Living Theatre. It was as though Simmons was quoting his own generation out of a certain mistrust. How can I still provoke that specific Fringe audience, is what he seems to be asking. He creates an ironic self-portrait of the fringe theatre. I found it to be an overly pessimistic, unjust attitude. The fringe theatre is not a freestanding, fenced-off sort of theatre; it is a source of inspiration, from which the established theatre and its audience has still not tasted enough. It would testify to a much-too-narrow notion of his own work if he were to throw in the towel now. nrc handelsblad, september 8th 1977 237

1978

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23 ‘Stuart Sherman’s City Portraits Full of Imagination’ The American performance soloist Stuart Sherman numbers his spectacles. In the Mickery Theater he is presenting Number 10: Portraits of Places. In eighteen short scenes he portrays eighteen residential centres, mostly well-known cities or combinations of them. The portraits have nothing in common with postcards, nor the atmospheric sketches that tourists would recognise. Amsterdam is represented by two folding tables, with the aid of a stone, a tiny pair of scales, two plastic bags, one of which contains scissors, a stick and a red, crumpled sheet of cellophane paper. He does not say what he intends with these objects. The spectator, searching for recognition, might perhaps be able to think up something for the space between both tables, which could represent a canal, which he appears to let the stone drop into, or for the red cellophane, which you could associate with the red light district. But as for what the rest is all about? It is clearly not Sherman’s intention to let the audience form associations with anything it might itself imagine about the cities. Every portrait is an abstraction, though it must be understood that every object he uses is in itself very concrete and banal. He apparently apportions meanings to objects that he keeps to himself. He uses them as a language, in which ordinary words mean precisely not what they signify in themselves. He undoes all of the agreements that we have made about the meaning and function of objects and words. I compare his work with language because Sherman strikes me as a poet, albeit of relatively inaccessible poetry. He is also a visual artist, because he places the objects very consciously in a (figurative) space. That which would be termed the division of surfaces in a painting is, in his case, the action that occurs during a precisely paced period of time. Concentration

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His performance is executed in a strict tempo, which you might term hurried, if it were not so controlled. The sequence and the combination of objects, the laying ready and clearing away of materials for every city portrait, occurs in the same rhythm, which could only be the result of a high degree of awareness and concentration. It is this awareness that he conveys to the audience; it is merely that you cannot put a name to it. Sherman goes to work as a magician. He tries to compel you to a similar awareness, so that you are able to desist from seeking anecdotal, literal meanings.

Because this is a performance (and not one of the traditional variety), his portraits possess an advantage over paintings. You can walk past paintings; it is a matter of chance whether you wish to look more closely. Here, Sherman compels you to look and I must say that for me it was a rare and fascinating activity. What Sherman does is rooted in the poetic and visual arts, but this is still relatively virgin territory in the theatre. Sherman uses his poetic, visual and theatrical methods with inescapable expressive power, which one should be able to demand of every artist. I found it to be an astonishing evening. nrc handelsblad, april 15th 1978

24 ‘A Great Deal of Adolescent Distress in Spr i ng

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

Awa k eni ng ’

One of the schoolboys in Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (from 1891) is named Hansje Rilow, a neglected loser who cherishes an adolescent love for his classmate Ernst, and is caught masturbating in a toilet. The Italian theatre maker Memé Perlini once performed this role in the short-lived period that he wanted to become an actor. Last year, Perlini staged a very personal Spring Awakening with his seven-year-old company La Maschera, from Rome, which can be seen from May 15th in De Zaaierkerk, opposite the Mickery Theater on the Rozengracht in Amsterdam. He no longer plays Hansje, but this character does nevertheless form the starting point for the performance. All of the events in the performance are seen through Hansje’s eyes, as it were. Spring Awakening is a nightmare of adolescence. Perlini presents something that is quite different to Wedekind’s play. Perlini depicts the recollection of a youth on the hard land of the Romagna where he comes from. In Wedekind, he recognised the ‘physical and psychological oppression’ of adolescents, who are weighed down by the regimentation of their parents and teachers. Much of the text is preserved, but torn up and stuck back together again. In the performance, the text, furnishings and other objects, and the sharp lighting and slide projection, possess an equal function. ‘The texts’, says Perlini, ‘are the clothes that we put on.’ Visual

The theatre that Perlini attempts to create is primarily visual. He takes no notice of the orthodox rules of mise-en-scène. In some of his productions (including Othello, after Shakespeare) he makes use of aesthetic forms to illustrate the psychological or magical atmosphere of the subject. Text is

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often absent but he has now relented in this regard. By his own account, he is more and more concerned with everyday life. By this, he does not mean that the performance has the pretension of realism, not by a long way. What he portrays in Spring Awakening is the trauma of girls and boys in puberty, and this takes place in an exaggerated manner. The members of the teaching staff at the school that the boys attend are summed up in the person of the principal, a fat older man who maintains order with a revolver. The mother of the girl Wendela is played by a large, very robust woman in a black suit; the mother of the boy Moritz, who later commits suicide, is a very tall, cool beauty. The terrible events that the children endure are not actually shown in the written play, but they are in Perlini’s performance. Wendela’s rape, Moritz’s suicide, and Wendela’s abortion are performed in a magnified state, as it were, with loud cries and the persistent tones of pianos and organs. The relationship between Wendela and her gigantic mother, in particular, is depicted disconcertingly. When she discovers that her daughter is pregnant, the mother throws Wendela on to the bed and hits her with a pillow without stopping, until the feathers fly off it. After the abortion scene, Wendela cries for several minutes out of fear and misery, in a more heart-rending way than I have ever heard in the theatre. At that moment I recognised the distress of my own puberty, the magnitude of which had never seemed so overpowering to me. I must have suppressed the memory of it and I admire Perlini’s uncompromising courage in depicting that sorrow in the most frantic way possible. The theatre of cruelty.

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Close-Ups

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The lighting plays its own role. Perlini himself sits at the front-centre of the performance area, behind the light regulators. From time to time he places the stage in darkness, so that the black space seems to be composed purely of sounds. Perlini lights up details of objects or performers with a floodlight, independently of the performance. These are close-ups like in a film. Perlini’s work, which he himself terms expressionism, is akin to that of Pip Simmons, Peter Zadek and Spalding Gray (Performance Group from New York). This is a trend in which no realism is represented, but rather a psychic state. Soon Perlini will begin staging Peter Handke’s The Ride Across Lake Constance, in which the performers stand up to their midriffs in water, and The Birds by Aristophanes, which will be presented in a park in Rome. La Maschera’s work gives the makers a reason for existence, for life it-

self. ‘We do not make any obvious things. That would be the death of intellect’, says Perlini. nrc handelsblad, may 12th 1979

25 ‘The Artist’s Work is the Creation of Illusion’

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Prelude to Death in Venice by Mabou Mines Amsterdam, December 11th – Mabou Mines is one of the American theatre companies that do more than merely act out written plays. Just as with the Living Theatre, the Performance Group and Bob Wilson, the performance is an autonomous work of art. It is not merely a performance in the traditional sense; it is also its own metaphor. It is striking how literary the American avant-garde theatre has become, in the sense that text, content, form and performance comprise a unity that can be interpreted on different levels, like poetry or prose. The influence of branches of the arts other than theatre is great. Mabou Mines has adapted many visual art forms (especially minimalist and conceptual art), but currently uses facets of everyday American culture, the pop culture. Prelude to Death in Venice can currently be seen in the Mickery Theater, written and directed by Lee Breuer, director of Mabou Mines. The lead character is a puppet, depicting a young man in jeans, checked shirt, leather jacket and a woollen cap, just like half the men in Greenwich Village. The puppet is called John, which is not only a boy’s name, but in American slang also means toilet or a prostitute’s client, someone who pays for sex. The puppet is operated by the actor Bill Raymond, who is more than just a puppeteer. He is the puppet’s ‘agent’, in both the literal and the figurative sense. Every artist in America has an agent, who has to be able to sell him. The puppet, John, is a filmmaker, calls himself a producer and this can also be interpreted as the generator of art. The puppet, John, is busy conducting various telephone conversations simultaneously on two telephones and a public phone box. These conversations are lifted out of reality with the aid of a sound décor, consisting of voices, organ music and mechanical sounds; they resemble the trip of a demented junky. What seems to be gibberish on first hearing proves to have multiple meanings on closer inspection. As a Dutch spectator you cannot extract these meanings easily. The New York slang is often too difficult; it would seem that even the New Yorker who comes from above 14th Street would not understand all of the word play. Therefore Lee Breuer hesitated for a long time before bringing the show to Amsterdam.

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Jewish Cemetery

Prelude to Death in Venice is in part autobiographical. Whoever believes that the title simply refers to the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann merely holds one small thread of the solution to this complex puzzle. A voice with a put-on German accent quotes a few paragraphs from the book: for Breuer, Mann’s protagonist, Aschenbach, stands for the artist in middle age, who comes to the realisation that everything he has created is really a surrogate. Breuer, who is 42, thinks that in America someone is middle aged at 35. The Venice in the title refers more to Venice Beach, California. ‘That’s one big Jewish cemetery’, says Breuer. ‘Well-off Jews from New York tend to move there to wait for a happy death.’ Breuer’s grandmother was one of them. ‘It is actually the return to the village in Eastern Europe, peace and rest’, he says. What Breuer primarily wants to depict with Prelude to Death in Venice is the impossibility of making art in America in the sense that it is understood in Romanticism. ‘Almost the entire emotional life of an American is an orchestrated idea of the media’s’, he says. ‘It is very difficult to experience an emotion that does not already exist. Saying I love you is almost no longer possible without electronic amplification.’ The result of this societal alienation is an art form that is known as Quotation Art in America. Breuer uses electronics as a quote, as Andy Warhol did with soup cans. The piles of loudspeakers on both sides of the telephone booth in Prelude to Death in Venice are stacked in precisely trained floodlights. For Breuer they are just as important as humankind, which is not portrayed without reason as a manipulated puppet, who gets tangled up in feelings that are not even his own, but are pre-masticated by cultural patterning.

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Death of Art

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The puppet is an art product made by man, an artefact, as Breuer says. ‘If one can’t make art, one decides to compensate by making artefacts. This signifies the death of art. If John cannot work, he will decide to work himself to death. He will consume himself.’ Prelude to Death in Venice is a later developed, now independent component of the production The Shaggy Dog Animation, in which the lead role is played by a female puppet named Rose. Rose is manipulated like a dog that John is the owner of, and for whom in turn the world – in this case American society – is a hell of alienation. The Shaggy Dog Animation is the third part of a six-part work. The first is called The Red Horse Animation, which was performed in the Mickery Theater about seven years ago; the second is The B. Beaver Animation. The

animal names in the titles refer to the Buddhist philosophy and the six steps to consciousness derived from it. In Shaggy Dog, hell is depicted; in Prelude, the human world. The next play, about the peaceful gods, will be a children’s play; the last part will be about power and will be inspired by the stadium of the ‘jealous gods’. The form of Mabou Mines’ work is Western, says Breuer, but the imagery is Eastern. He is not a Buddhist but maintains that Eastern philosophy has permeated the American consciousness. He is of the opinion that without this influence conceptual and minimalist art would be unthinkable.

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Madhouse

From 1964 to 1970 Breuer lived in Europe. ‘When John Kennedy was assassinated I’d had enough of all the garbage. Most of my friends from San Francisco were dead; because of dope. San Francisco had burned itself up, like New York in 1968. The innocence had been lost, it was a madhouse and confusion reigned. Some threw themselves into political activism, particularly against the war in Vietnam. I went to Europe.’ The core of what is now Mabou Mines came into existence in Paris. There, the collaboration began with the American composer Philip Glass, a popular avant-garde musician, who is now also known in our country. When they wanted to form a theatre company they felt themselves to be isolated in a French-language area, so eventually they decided to relocate themselves to New York. Over the last few years Breuer’s interests have shifted from conceptual to popular imagery, as it is seen in American culture. The heroic imagery in America is associated with sport, particularly American football (Mabou Mines presented a stylised American football match in the Mickery Theater) and romantic imagery is associated with electronics such as film, television, radio and electrically amplified pop music. For Breuer, electronics as an art form is of the same order as the practice of politics and banking. ‘Real American art cannot be made for less than 30 million dollars. It is really Apocalypse Now’, he says, suggestively referring to Coppola’s film of the same name. ‘The more money you spend, the closer art comes to business. The work of the artist is the creation of an illusion, as is the work of a businessman. The stock exchange is one great conceptual artwork.’ nrc handelsblad, december 11th 1979

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1980 26 ‘ Poi nt Ju dith : Hot and Cold Nightmare’

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Point Judith by The Wooster Group from New York Direction: Elizabeth LeCompte. Performers (leading roles): Spalding Gray, Willem Dafoe, Michael French, Ron Vawter, Libby Howes and Matthew Hansell. Seen May 6th in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. Amsterdam – One of the most important theatre innovators of the last few years is the American Robert Wilson. He has had a great influence on the development of dance and mime in our country, where the innovation has opened up more than in drama. The innovation is primarily connected to the form, the most striking aspect of Wilson’s work. Now, formal innovation can rapidly lead to sterile aesthetics if the concrete ideas behind it remain too cosy. There is a great deal of brainwork and psychology in Wilson’s autobiographical work, but their content is not made directly visible on stage. Wilson only alludes to it and, with him, the spectator runs the risk of missing the content. Spalding Gray and Liz LeCompte from The Wooster Group (previously The Performance Group) go much further. They adapt Gray’s autobiographical material into forms that are much more theatrical and extreme than is the case with Wilson. You would not believe it possible, but Gray and LeCompte succeed in uniting two almost contradictory theatrical trends from this century: the strictly personal frenzy of Antonin Artaud and the detachment of Bertold Brecht. Their work is hot and cold simultaneously and has the effect of ice at 40 degrees below zero, from which you can incur burns. A year and a half ago in the Mickery Theater, Gray and LeCompte presented the trilogy Three Places in Rhode Island: Sakonett Point, the serene dream of a sunny youth, Rumstick Road, the Oedipal nightmare of the son about his suicidal mother, and Nayatt School, the divisive madness of social reality. The trilogy is now being rounded off with the epilogue Point Judith, which can be seen in the Mickery Theater through May 24th. Oil rig

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Point Judith lies in the Gulf of Mexico. There they drill for oil from rigs. The first scene takes place between three workers and their foreman on one such oil rig. Their dialogue is characterised by an unprecedented obscenity, but it is spoken in such a rhythm and performed with such detachment that it sounds like poetry (certainly for the non-American spectator who cannot literally follow half of it).

The mutual relationships in this world of men devoid of women become clear amongst all the filth. The foreman manipulates his subordinates, like God the father, to commit murder and manslaughter and offers protection to the youngest of the three workmen, who is still a boy. It is a fatherhood of total arbitrariness. In the text there is reference to the vital importance of the oil industry, whereby Spalding Gray also casually alludes to American society. The microcosm that is depicted represents this society and the relationship between authority and the people. Whereas the trilogy began with the relationship between the son and mother, the epilogue deals with the father and son. Together, the entire artwork signifies a metaphor for the family and thereby for society. The foreman, played by Spalding, is also the director in a theatrical sense. He commissions his men to do a ‘party piece’, a solo number at a party. The innocent youngest (Michael French) sings the famous ballad Danny Boy. The older workman, a primitive knife fighter (Ron Vawter), emits a number of formidable primal screams, accompanied by a rock song. His younger colleague, portrayed as someone without an identity (Willem Dafoe), lip-synchs to a song by Elvis Presley.

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Long Journey

The foreman’s solo number comprises the second part of the epilogue. The half-high black curtain is slid open to reveal a sort of wooden house on poles. The foreman-director announces that A Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill will be paraphrased here. This play – as is well known – deals with a family of which the father is a failed actor, the mother a morphine addict, the oldest son an alcoholic and the youngest a poet (O’Neill himself). Here, the play is summarised as a total nightmare, to compare with Eliot’s Cocktail Party from Nayatt School and the scene of the mother’s madness from Rumstick Road, while you are also reminded of Sakonett Point in O’Neill’s account of a sunny vacation day at the beach with his father. The text is spoken with distortion via loudspeakers and megaphones. The workmen, dressed up as O’Neill’s characters, frantically run back and forth, in and around the house. Light and sound effects (Carnival Romain by Berlioz) heighten the dream character of the scene. It is enough to make Freud lick his fingers. The oldest son forces mother into a French kiss; the servant flaps sheets continuously; the youngest son flees out of the house and looks on astonished with a little boy beside him, who is a youthful version of himself. These latter two represent O’Neill and Gray, outsiders and participants in the family drama, who would create art from their experiences of youth.

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The father remains at a distance and addresses the audience via a megaphone. So very much takes place in a few minutes – both for the eye and the mind – that it is impossible to keep up with it all, let alone describe it here in brief. Nuns

Following this section we return to the oil rig. A film of the sea is projected on to two small film screens. The house from the nightmare turns out to be standing in the water (as the rig); it is inhabited by playful nuns; as a whole it is cheerful (and also ironical, given that the nuns are played by men). The meaning of this closing scene is not entirely clear to me. On the one hand, it perhaps has something to do with the androgynous individual and on the other, religion. The nuns catch fish and this is a very Christian symbol. The performance left a bewildering impression on me. I could not grasp everything by a long way, the language barrier was a problem, but this Point Judith and the preceding trilogy have the impact of a mighty novel. Just as with Ulysses by James Joyce it can keep one going for years. Whoever might have grown a little despondent at the thought that the theatre of the last few years has kept bubbling away as Werkteater imitation, empty movement aesthetics and the new wine in old skins that is the repertory theatre, will be consoled by this performance. There truly is something going on again. nrc handelsblad, may 7th 1980

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27 ‘Overly Danger-free Theatre about Human Powerlessness’ I used to like this place before they started making all those renovations [Renovations], by Theatre X and Mickery. Text: John Schneider. Music: Henk van der Meulen. Stage image: Ritsaert ten Cate. Performers: Deborah Clifton, Flora Coker, Kathryn Cornell, Victor Delorenzo, Arleen Kalenich, John Kishline, Kristin Latinovich, Peter Lurvink, Henk van der Meulen, John Schneider. Seen September 16th in Mickery.

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Amsterdam September 18th – Mickery’s director, Ritsaert ten Cate, is fascinated by the phenomenon of how the tremendous stream of information about what is taking place in the world does not really get through to

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us. His most recent production is once again an attempt to rub our noses into our indifference. Whether he succeeds in arousing the audience from its torpor, I doubt. A few seasons ago he made the production Folter Follies, together with the American company Theatre X and others; it was a sort of multi-media quiz in which the audience was manipulated to such an extent that it appeared to be responsible for political torture, which was also demonstrated theatrically. That highly original production might have failed on a few points, but at least it aroused the desired indignation. The new production, which is again performed by Theatre X, is better constructed as far as the form is concerned. Ten Cate certainly produces very different theatre from elsewhere, but on this occasion it is less original in its genre and lacks danger. Even the attempt by one of the performers to dispose of ten guilders for some charitable cause, inside or outside the theatre, yielded an unsatisfying result on the evening I visited the performance. The ten guilders disappeared into the purse of one of those present without much discussion. The play, which is performed in English, bears the title: I used to like this place before they started making all those renovations, in which the tendency towards conservatism is concealed. The décor suggests a near-realistic bar, where one can place real orders. This bar – which is not called Chez Nous for nothing – successively transforms into a sauna, a chic eatery and a sort of devotional altar and thereby presents an image of a sumptuous consumption drive and pseudo-religious trends. The bar is occupied by actors who represent personnel and a few visitors. There is a crooning hostess, a waitress disaffected with her work, a woman unhappy in love and powerless in societal anger, a missionary type who poses critical questions and a bartender who takes the suffering of the world upon himself as a sort of redeemer. Our Gripes

Beneath their realistic exterior these characters possess a deeper meaning. They represent attitudes of disinterest or powerlessness towards the suffering of the world, submerged as they are in their own little problems. Attempts at meaningful mutual contact continually fail. Although the characters are given few pregnant texts – apart from the odd wellformulated crumb – they give a good impression of our daily bar-table gripes. The opportunity to recognise ourselves is consciously promoted with a few previously tested manipulative tricks. The audience’s attention is deliberately distracted by waitresses coming to take orders, by the performance of different dialogues simultaneously and switching on the televi-

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sion (the first and second channels). Moreover, the Mickery Theater cat regularly wanders through it all. At certain times the writer (John Schneider from Theatre X) makes it known that the subject of the play is: how to respond to the daily news. The answer is: with increasing indifference. The performers demonstrate this, we recognise it, but this is obvious. The performance sketches a situation, makes us feel guilty about it, but it does not break through anywhere. It remains the formulation of an ethical problem that does not go any further than the silent, moralistic reproach that we – well-willing petty bourgeoisie – do not do anything. The acting is very decent, there are occasional laughs and Henk van der Meulen has composed beautiful music. Yet still the makers remain out of range. Of course, the performance suggests that we ourselves are responsible for our lethargy and should therefore come up with our own solutions. But because the performance already moralises beneath the surface, I did expect a more powerful example from the makers. At the end I thought that someone would stand up and deliver a plea for the d66 Liberal Democrats or for Performance Ratings, or even better: something in between. The play can be seen in the Mickery Theater through September 27th (except Sunday and Monday). Thereafter, the interesting Theatre X is touring the Mickery circuit with two plays: The Calamity Ruth Foose Show and Dreambelly. nrc handelsblad, september 18th 1980

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

28 ‘ R edh eugh Gives Tender Impression of Memory’ Redheugh by Mike Figgis c.s. Performers: Gilly Edwards, Mike Figgis, Tony Work. Songs: Julianna Bethlen. Musicians: Harriet Allen, Fiona McIntosh, Jake Tucker. Through November 29th in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam

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Amsterdam, November 14th – Three musicians sit beneath a cinema screen, as they used to do in an orchestra pit. To the left and right of the screen there is a room. One is old-fashioned and half in ruins; the other is new and neat. The wall clock and bookcase in each room are mirror images of each other. Along the front, in the middle, is a mound of peat dust: Mother Earth, from which people believed dead and forgotten sounds arise. This is how the surprisingly lit stage image appears in Redheugh, a Mickery production designed by Mike Figgis, who worked for many years

with the British People Show and has now started out on his own. A journey is undertaken through the memory of the War (1940) in fragments of images on film and in the scene itself, which are arranged as though in a dream. The film depicts a half-unconscious, lovemaking couple in a ruined world amidst miniature bombers and flames. A wounded flier comes stumbling over green hills. The film stops; light sweeps over the mound of earth that a figure frees itself from. It is the pilot who slowly walks through an assembly of aeroplanes, lit from a low angle. It is an example of the ingenuity with which the filmic images and the live scenes on stage are interwoven. Slowly a war idyll is made clear, accompanied by Glenn Miller and old blues. A young woman hides the flier. She puts the wounded man to bed. He wakes up and it is 40 years later. He could be the flier’s son. In the room to the left, the young woman daydreams; in the room to the right, there is a lady in regal mourning, singing elegiac songs and accompanied by the trio. The music shifts almost imperceptibly from classicallike music to jazz. Past and present are interwoven, memory occurs now.

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Death

This is a performance of great tenderness, though a certain menace is continually present in the form of a man who walks with some difficulty with a stick, and who can be seen in both the film and on the stage. At the beginning and end he calls a certain Max and he assures him that he will take care of the job. We do not learn what the job is or the identity of the man. Perhaps he is an archetype for death or fear. The performance has a wonderfully balanced atmosphere; the images are impalpable, but not in an irritating way. There are two less successful factors: a few performers walk off the performance area without this having any meaning and the tension is watered down at the end. This does not detract from the fact that the performance is worth seeing. november 14th 1980

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1981 29 ‘Holland Festival Production by the Mickery Theater’

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‘Stuart Sherman’s Hamlet as Cerebral Game with Objects’ Hamlet, a Portrait. Design and direction: Stuart Sherman. Producer: Mickery Theater. Performers (leading roles): Peter Baren, Michael Greenall, Anthony Howell, Joost Ideler, Glenys Johnson, Jack Henry Moore, Stuart Sherman, Peter Stickland. Seen June 2nd in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam – Shakespeare’s Hamlet has five acts. The Hamlet Portrait by Stuart Sherman has five transparent and five white cubes and five rectangular, black partitions, in each of which there is a white door in the form of the human figure. An oval has been sawn out at face height in the first of these humandoors. There are two square peepholes in this oval. This schematic maskface has also been sawn out of the following four doors, repeatedly at a lower level. Looking from left to right, the face of this door-person sinks into the legs, so to speak. A similar decline can also be observed on the white cubes. An oval, cut out, black and white photo of Sherman’s face has been pasted on the first cube. On the second there is an x-ray of this face. On the third, there is a white oval with the word Hamlet printed on it: the face has become word. On the fourth, the white oval displays concentric black lines – an abstract form in itself. And finally on the fifth cube, the oval is black: Hamlet no longer exists. When read from left to right, an anecdotal representation is gradually abstracted, yet at the same time Hamlet has become a word, ultimately to die. Something similar occurs on the transparent cubes. A photo of a hand clasping a sword transforms through four phases into a black stripe. There are toy swords stuck into these cubes and there are five tape recorders, from which fragments of text from an English performance of Hamlet will later be heard. At a given moment you can also hear the sound of performers fencing. This transforms into the echo of a sword fight, the word ‘swordplay’, which can mean both swordfight and a duel with words, and afterwards electronic sounds and finally a continuous monotone. Beneath this mini sound drama, a circle of light glides over the corresponding visual drama on the series of Plexiglas cubes. On either side of the row are two performers: a man and a woman dressed in dark blue and black. They have their mouths wide open. They are meant to be Hamlet’s

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mother and evil stepfather, the universal parents who abandon their child. They manipulate the white cubes as though they are dicing with Hamlet’s fate. The five other performers are dressed in everyday trousers and shirts; no two look alike. Everyone has their own door, their own transparent and white cubes. The Hamlet in the middle is Sherman himself, at the point upon the cubes where face and sword have become word. In the middle, and third, act of the original Hamlet, a play within a play is performed. This is the scene in which a guest group of players acts out the murder of Hamlet’s father. A dialogue from this act is now quoted (Paul Scofield’s voice), in which Hamlet acts as theatre critic. Here, he says that the meaning of theatre is ‘to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature’ and show ‘the very age and body of the time his form and pressure’. Hamlet also raves against blustering actors and pleads for the abolition of this sort of acting. Immediately afterwards Hamlet greets his friend Horatio, to whom he says, amongst other things: ‘Give me the man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core.’ These are the only texts that are retained here from Hamlet. They are Stuart Sherman’s credo for his theatrical outlook and perhaps for his life too. He wants nothing to do with imitative theatre. His performances (he has already presented three in the Mickery Theater, this is the fourth) are objects in time and space. The anecdotal has been excised, or rather: transformed into concepts. He uses performers as presenters. Their exactly performed actions with objects can be compared to grammar. The passion is controlled. Sherman assumes that Hamlet is familiar from back to front. It would thus be hypocritical to accord value to the picturesque. This is also the reason that pages from the text have been pasted on to four wing-like set pieces. And at a given moment the performers hold the pocket book in front of their faces. The play as a whole has become an object. Hamlet’s famous cry ‘Words, words, words!’ is translated here as ‘Objects, objects, objects!’ Kierkegaard

Sherman also deals with Hamlet’s content. This figure is a thinker who does not proceed as far as action. Sherman quotes Kierkegaard in the programme. The quote comes down to this: whoever wishes to objectify subjective thought will be unable to act and therefore will cease to exist. This is the reason for the decline from anecdote to death that is repeated on all of the objects. What is remarkable is that all of these cerebral notions (which are represented as neutrally as possible) as a whole acquire the form of a children’s

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game. The cubes reminded me of the blocks that you played with as a child, which had a painting on each side of a scene from nature: ducks, calves in the meadow. When Sherman has his Hamlets all lined up with toy swords in their hands and with masks on, he demonstrates something of the quality of a little boy who thinks it wonderful that his friends finally do something that he does first. This Hamlet takes 23 minutes and is immediately repeated. This may be for the audience to once again consider the extremely compact amount of information, but perhaps the repetition also serves to give you the impression that the work of art is not a literal object, but takes place in your mind. I felt a slight disappointment about this production immediately afterwards because it is little more than a playful variation on Sherman’s earlier performances, Portraits of Places, The Erotic and Language. In this case, you watch more with your brains than with your imagination or your feeling. But the longer I was able to reflect, the greater the effect that this most wonderful Hamlet had on me. It is a cryptogrammic explosion in you brain. nrc handelsblad, june 3rd 1981

1982 30 ‘Racism of American Culture in Groundbreaking

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Theatre by Wooster Group’

Route 1 & 9 (the last act) by The Wooster Group from New York. Design: Jim Clayburgh and Elizabeth LeCompte. Direction: Elizabeth LeCompte. Performers: Willem Dafoe, Ron Vawter, Kate Valk and Peyton Smith. Seen March 16th and 17th in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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Route 1 & 9 by The Wooster Group from New York is a theatrical work of art about the cultural and intellectual Apartheid in the United States. It depicts the bankruptcy of social equality according to the law; the racism is deeply anchored in the thought and feelings of whites, as it is the world over. The performance is far removed from the didactic banality of political theatre. It is a painful masterpiece that touches the heart with its theatrical forms and at the same time exercises the mind with its numerous intellectual implications. The performance begins with the programme booklet, which for once is not written to pre-prepare the intentions for the spectator, but to pro-

vide the essential details for the better consideration of every facet of the performance. The starting point for Route 1 & 9 is Our Town, a well-known play by Thornton Wilder. It provides a portrait of an agrarian community in New England: decent, God-fearing, rigid and white. At the premiere in 1938, the play caused quite a stir because of its form. There is no realistic set, there are flashbacks, the dead can speak and an actor in the role of a stage manager performs as the explicator of the events surrounding the young couple George and Emily. The content is simple: ordinary human life surprised in its innocence and ignorance by death. The play has become part of the American cultural heritage. Americans have readily learned to see themselves as the simple, God-fearing country folk of Our Town, with the proviso that they are white and Protestant, of course. American literary studies have contributed to this myth formation. The prologue to the performance consists of a video screening of a sort of Teleac lesson about the dramaturgy of Our Town. This lesson is given via a primitive form of audiovisual conveyance from the 1960s. A self-assured know-it-all explains to the people what Our Town means; the drift of the argument is made apparent by means of a few miniscule hitches on the videotape. Already warned, the audience enters the auditorium for the actual performance.

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Self-satisfied

In this performance, The Wooster Group juxtaposes the myth of Our Town with a no longer valued cultural heritage of black people. In this way, the life convictions of Our Town acquire the bitter aftertaste of self-satisfaction. The white worldview denies the ‘black soul’. To make this clear, the performance makes use of a black theatre form that has fallen into disuse. In a transformed state, they present an indecent sketch by Pigmeat Markham, a black vaudeville artiste who was very popular in the 1940s and 50s, but exclusively amongst black people. This sketch, a birthday party where castor oil flows as copiously as strong liquor and cocaine, takes place around the aluminium skeleton of a pre-fabricated house, with stirring music (Ramsey Lewis if I am not mistaken), which is meant for occupants who are ‘cool’, thus ‘indifferent’. This skeleton was completed a moment earlier by two men, dirt poor, deaf and dumb, blind and black. What is frightening is that the two black men and their two black girlfriends are played by white actors, made up like Black Piets (Santa’s coloured helpers in the Netherlands), talking and moving like soul brothers and sisters amongst one another. It is precisely because the actors are white that the racial division becomes apparent. Al Jolson’s blackface was both racist and a means of warding off the fear that blacks arouse in whites.

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The fact that the performers from The Wooster Group make use of this method demonstrates that they consider themselves partly responsible for this racism. After the vaudeville reconstruction we see a segment of the last act of Our Town in close-ups on four monitors, where the deceased Emily returns to the parental home on the day of her twelfth birthday. She returns disillusioned to the grave because it turns out that her family is leading an unconscious life in which death is denied. The stage master appears on the screen and he establishes with a certain degree of rage that the people are ignorant and trample upon feelings. This acquires a significance in the performance that reaches further than Thornton Wilder could ever have suspected. The unconscious hate and fear of black people among whites is made evident.

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Vampire Teeth

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While the scenes from Our Town are being shown, the four black people are busy furnishing the metal house, making sure that they do not disturb the television show. When the last scene has finished they appear to have changed clothes and they burst into a wild, but very precisely choreographed dance to the accompaniment of a Caribbean calypso. They open their mouths, they have vampire teeth, blood drips out. Here, the black myth goes a step further, namely in the direction of the zombie and the risen dead: Baron Samedi, who has a life-determining role in the folklore of death on Haiti. The violence of the last scene, which takes place in a mythic churchyard, ends meditatively. On the monitors we see an American highway in total silence, viewed from a driving bus. On a fifth screen a hardcore porn film is shown of a copulating couple with a voyeur, in whom we recognise one of the performers from The Wooster Group, who had previously been seen as the stage manager in Our Town and the dramaturg in the Teleac course. The performance is a very carefully organised manipulation of the audience. The conscious life of the whites is portrayed as only possible inside the casing of the monitors; their hate and fear are represented in the performance area in the natural state. Various branches of art theory are utilised: iconography, reception aesthetics and dramaturgy. It is as though Route 1 & 9, in addition to being a metaphor about life and death, and black and white, also entails an attack on white science, which through the denial of black culture can no longer be called objective. These notions do not obstruct the work as an artistic expression. Under the direction of Liz LeCompte The Wooster Group provides pioneering work in the dramatic arts. nrc handelsblad, march 18th 1982

1983 31 ‘Merciless Vision of Society and Art by a Pessimistic Moralist’

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‘Decorte’s Lear: cruelties towards a shortsighted little man’ King Lear by William Shakespeare. Company: Het Trojaanse Paard. Direction and décor: Jan Decorte. Costumes: Sigrid Vinks. Performer (leading role): Dirk van Dijck. Seen April 22nd in the Beursschouwburg, Brussels. In the Mickery Theater in May. The characters in the cruel drama King Lear are portrayed by Het Trojaanse Paard, the company of the Flemish director Jan Decorte, as petty bourgeois. In their short-sightedness they do the most terrible things to each other on the authority of a higher power, in this case the genius playwright William Shakespeare. We do not get to see the work of art of a great writer, but rather the incapacity of the citizen to recognise this work of art, or art in general. Decorte extends this lack of understanding to society, where we are all wolves together. Decorte is one of the most pessimistic moralists in Dutch-language theatre. His radical vision of life and art is not confined to the interpretation of the plays that he uses. He also roughly breaks with the theatrical methods that usually transport the public – beautiful sets, beautiful lighting, beautiful diction and mature acting. He forbids the performers just about everything that they learned at theatre school. With King Lear, as with earlier productions, such as Kimbelijn and Torquato Tasso, Decorte gives the actors the instruction to perform as dilettantes, dragged from behind the sansevierias and set on stage. They operate precisely according to the text, but must not colour it with psychologically responsible sensitivities and craftsmanship. Afterwards, the spectator should not say: King Lear, a heap of misery, but well performed. Here, there is no question of a Brecht-like distance between actor and character. Even before the actor is on stage he has been apportioned the role of an everyday citizen, without imagination and without feeling for his fellow man. If he or she does possess such feeling (the Duke of Kent, Cordelia, a servant), then it is one of limited helplessness. Politician

Therefore, the young actor Dirk van Dijck’s Lear is not a king from the Shakespearian tradition, but some man in a dark blue suit, an old-fash-

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ioned gentleman’s hat and dark-rimmed spectacles, because he is extremely short-sighted. He looks like a measly little politician from the 1930s, as the viewers of the brt series about The New Order (Belgium in wartime) regularly see on television. King Lear develops through strictly delineated stages into a madman of the sort that one does not easily show compassion for, but would rather avoid. He produces a great yawn during the final dialogues with his faithful daughter Cordelia. In the closing scene, he points to the red strangulation marks on her neck like a feeble-minded child, then has an acute heart attack and drops dead. During the monologue where Lear curses women and sexuality, Van Dijck stands masturbating furtively in a corner of the set. Yes, even that; the spectator is spared nothing. Nevertheless, it is an intelligent interpretation of the text: misogyny as porno. Van Dijck’s Lear exhibits no greatness in his madness, which would be usual in more Romantic interpretations, but rather senility. He does arouse pity and fascination, though. The Duke of Kent, Lear’s faithful counsellor, is portrayed as a respectable educator in a green loden coat, almost endearing in his naivety. The Duke of Gloucester has the musical locomotion of a supple athlete; his white gloves give him the hint of a clown. Ultimately, he is the only one who has enjoyed life.

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Interchangeable

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The other characters here are blunt place-hunters: Decorte considers the half-brothers Edmund and Edgar and Lear’s sons-in-law Albany and Cornwall to be so interchangeable that he allows them to be played by one actor, who also plays the courtier Oswald. For Decorte, all of them are much of a slimy muchness. Lear’s oldest daughters, Goneril and Regan, are represented as Cinderella’s evil sisters, clothed in cocktail wear with disco antennae on their expressionless, false heads. The comparison with Cinderella impresses itself because, in spite of Decorte’s misanthropy, he does preserve something of the unrestrained quality of the puppeteer. Most of the performers are vessels for unalterable characters, which puppets simply are. The way that Decorte sees cruel human activity in light of Shakespeare is illustrated by the torture scene in which the daughter and son-in-law kick out poor Gloucester’s eyes. A servant (of the palace and the theatre) is busy tidying the stage with a vacuum cleaner after the storm, in which a great deal of confetti has been strewn. He is interrupted by Regan and her husband, who has the servant tie Gloucester to a tub chair. Their criminal torture is an extension of household chores. Both brutes wipe the gunge from their shoes as though they have stepped in a dog’s turd.

Ordinary people as torturers. Is this not also the conclusion when you read of the world’s cruelties in the newspapers? Trick

The blinded Gloucester stands up. His eyes have been dressed by the faithful servant. He potters forwards, a saxophone is hung around his neck, while the red curtain behind him is lowered. From the loudspeakers you can hear a pop tune and Gloucester lip synchs. The blind musician, the blind artist, does his little trick and it is all in vain. Voila, Decorte’s vision of art and society. I am much too optimistic to be able to concur with this vision, but it certainly is one, and Jan Decorte gives it radical form with all theatrical means, even running the risk of causing his audience pain. It is a mercilessly long performance (five and a half hours) and you have to be a bit of a masochist to sit through to the end, but gradually the performance begins to fascinate. The one thing that continues to irritate me is the treatment of the text by many of the performers, which began to sound to me like the continuous barking of the neighbours’ dog. At a given moment I could no longer listen to the text and delved into my memory for previous Lear performances to keep up with what was going on. Can Decorte, who mistrusts the public and the performers in equal measure, really not find anything else in terms of length and text treatment to impart the same message? nrc handelsblad, april 26th 1983

1984

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32 ‘What Else is Theatre Other Than the Awkward Imitation of Other People’s Plays’

Scenes/Fairytales by Jan Decorte Company: Het Trojaanse Paard. Seen in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. The Flemish director Jan Decorte was going to perform Uncle Vanya with his company Het Trojaanse Paard, but halted work three weeks before the premiere and created something different: Scenes/Fairytales. The thrust of the performance is not all that different, if one views Chekhov’s play as the report of a closed company of desolate common folk who are not able to break out of their Sartre-like hell. It is only in terms of forms that Scenes/ Fairytales does not resemble a play, by some margin.

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Furniture, and projection and sound equipment, have been arranged on the performance floor according to the carelessness principle of the new aesthetics. A rope emphatically separates the performers from the audience; a butcher’s knife hangs in the middle, which exudes great threat. The three men and three women, neatly dressed in 1950s style, observe each other with expressionless faces. After the playing of a hazy amateur film about a rape, one of the women begins a sort of dance. She has bound red shoes to her calves from the fairytale about the girl who dances herself to death in this magical footwear. The other performers line up behind her one by one and try to imitate her movements, which possess a certain grace. What is theatre other than the awkward imitation of other people’s works of art? What is life other than following poorly understood ideals? In this performance, dialogues and monologues are replaced by dance. But whether it is pirouette, tap dance, or quickstep, the result is always poor and barren. This is what happens when people try to stand in one another’s shoes.

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Chekhov?

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At a given moment a woman hobbles around on five [pairs of] lady’s and gentleman’s shoes that have been pulled on over each other, and one of the men drags shoes with his foot that have been stuck together. This would work comically if the performers were not so lonely and sombre. Thus, Chekhov after all? This rhapsody for pseudo-dance in defective footwear seems to me to be the metaphor for the existential torments of the petty bourgeoisie, Decorte’s speciality. So-called happiness is portrayed in slides of family scenes. Quotes from horror fairytales give the impression that this has been the state of humanity since time immemorial. Decorte himself appears as the torturer when he again and again cuts the bare backbone of one of the women with the butcher’s knife, to the accompaniment of a duet from Bartok’s Bluebeard. No blood can be seen, but a red stripe becomes painfully visible. At the end, one of the characters breaks out. Dressed in an orange ballgown covered in tulle, she climbs high up into the Mickery Theater, to a corner specially furnished for her with mirrors and fluorescent light. She performs exercises at the bar. Decorte has quickly followed her and cruelly turns out the light. The rest is not quite silence, but the rustle of tulle and dancing feet. Scenes/Fairytales does not use a single theatrical trick to persuade the audience. Even the performers do not use their talent for projection and Decorte keeps himself well removed from direction. The form of the performance fits precisely with his vision of life. He scorns ordinary life and

considers being an artist as perhaps the only way out, but it is ‘dancing in the dark’. This is a moralistic standpoint, but fairytales are simply not possible without a moral. Decorte apparently does not wish the spectator to qualify his work as beautiful or ugly, exciting or boring. It is what it is, and as for the rest, suit yourself, seems to be the message here. The result is that the performance ultimately left me cold. nrc handelsblad, february 25th 1984

33

Th e Pow er of Th eatr ica l Folli es by Jan Fabre in the

Holland Festival

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‘Powerless Lover Bites and Kisses the Art of Theatre’ Performance Holland Festival: The Power of Theatrical Follies by Jan Fabre and fourteen performers. Producer: Mickery Theater Amsterdam and Kaaitheater Brussels. Décor, direction, concept: Jan Fabre. Costumes: Pol Engels. Music: Wim Mertens, Soft Verdict. Seen June 21st in the Stadsschouwburg, Amsterdam. At the beginning and end of The Power of Theatrical Follies by Jan Fabre, a text is used from Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist, to the music of the Swiss Othmar Schoeck (1927). Here, there is mention of ‘Kusse, Bisse, dass reimt sich’. According to Kleist, a kiss and a bite are mutually interchangeable for someone who loves with the whole heart; the lover ‘kann schon das Eine für das Andere greifen’ (can grasp the one or the other). Kissing and biting with love; this contradiction draws a tender sadomasochistic line through the four-and-a-half-hour-long performance. ­Fabre makes repeated use of such contrasts. His work is simultaneously serious and satirical, exciting and tedious, simple and pretentious, hardhanded and kind-hearted. The audience reacts correspondingly. Whoever is bored will leave the auditorium and go and grab a beer in the foyer and make a few cynical remarks about the performance. Although many leave the playhouse with disinterest, there are many others who nevertheless resume their seats and grow ever more fascinated. A relaxed, somewhat elated atmosphere reigns. Whoever might initially feel that Fabre intends it all deathly seriously, will discover adolescent jokes and satire. The Power of Theatrical Follies bites and kisses both the performers and the audience. It begins with a platoon of similarly dressed performers in front of a large white backdrop. They adopt contemplative poses with their backs to

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the auditorium and begin to applaud; with no reason, because there is nothing to be seen on the white curtain for the time being. Then a girl makes some stubborn attempts to climb up on to the proscenium. Time after time she is roughly driven back by a boy. ‘1876!’, he snaps at her commandingly, as though she has to pass an entrance exam. Only when the girl knows the answer, ‘Die Nibelungen Richard Wagner Bayreuth’, is she welcomed into the Valhalla of the theatre with a handshake of reconciliation from the boy. Later, the performers will call out more data about the premieres of sensational performances and their directors. On the first occasion, they do this while running on the spot, until they are dead tired. It is not easy to maintain yourself in the theatre, I understand. On the second occasion, hours later, the names and data sound tired and blasé; one has arrived.

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Blows

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The image of the girl and boy in combat returns at various times in the performance. On one occasion, they are kneeling opposite one another; the girl sings the love aria from Carmen; they slap each other hard on the cheeks, whilst the platoon performs movements from a military drill in the background, suggesting the presentation of arms. In the last big scene there are four couples. The men carry the women forwards, kneel and lay them down. Adopting an ardent pose, they gaze at the sleeping bodies, then stand up, cast a long glance over the left shoulder and slowly walk to the back. Without one really being aware of it, this action changes. As soon as the men have lain the women down, the last ones jump up and walk like frivolous mannequins to the back, where they lie down to sleep. The kneeling men now gaze ardently at nothing. The action is repeated so frequently that the men grow fatigued, while the women seem to grow more and more spirited. This is how Jan Fabre sees women: they are worshipped by men, but they always reject them. This is a somewhat banal interpretation. During this scene, a classical painting is projected on to the rear curtain of a winged Amor who leaves a sleeping Psyche; he casts a final glance over his shoulder at her. This long scene does not only treat the male-female relationship, it also possesses a symbolic meaning. What must the kiss be like with which love can rouse a sleeping soul? Does the relationship actually have any point, can it give birth to art? If I read Fabre’s ambiguous symbols correctly, then he strikes me as a rejected lover who will leave Valhalla before too long. The second line in the performance derives from two fairytales: the prince who was a frog and the emperor in his new clothes. Two naked boys put on fairy crowns. These Revian young princes (after the Dutch writer

Gerard Reve) are each other’s mirror image and they execute a cool tango. One of them is offered real clothes, the other invisible. The first one is dressed and no longer plays any significant role; he has become a citizen. The other prince remains naked, is run through by a mysterious opera singer and finally rests pietà-like in the arms of a dancer. The emperor’s new clothes may not exist, but they are used to make theatre. This must be Fabre’s self-satire, a sort of coquettish critique of theatrical folly. Fabre’s work has nothing of the capriciousness of Robert Wilson’s dream theatre. It is true that his scenes have numerous meanings, sometimes are even symbolical, but they remain concrete. Fabre’s primary stylistic device is the endless repetition; when they are exciting – which is not always the case – they lay bare the layers of meaning. Fabre’s previous work, which was entitled It Is Theatre as Could be Expected and Predicted, referred to reality, although he did quote a great deal from the youthful performance art. On this occasion, Fabre refers to art and art history. The fashionable ‘citazionismo’ has taken hold of him too, but at the same time he originally and convincingly demonstrates that there is no other alternative. He kisses and bites out of a post-modern powerlessness. nrc handelsblad, june 23rd 1984

1985

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34

R embr a n dt a n d H i tler or Me , a Mickery Production

‘A generation gets a voice in theatre collage’ Rembrandt and Hitler or Me Idea, design and direction: Ritsaert ten Cate. Dramaturgy: Joost Sternheim and Jan Zoet. Texts: Willem van Toorn, amongst others. Music: Henk van der Meulen, amongst others. Performers: David Brisbin, Deborah Clifton, Flora Coker, John Kishline, John Schneider, Megumi Shimanuki, Hanne Tierney. Through November 24th in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, except Monday. The Mickery production, Rembrandt and Hitler or Me, is a substantial, complex theatre work in which Ritsaert ten Cate provides a vision of life, death and the fading of moral values. In this multi-media performance’s form I recognise Ten Cate’s personal, undogmatic style, which is also evident from his writings. They are full of good ideas, but are seldom clearly formulated. This is

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the result when you want to explain too much at once. When I think I have understood something the spectacle repeatedly escapes me. Ten Cate’s style can indicate unclear thinking, but also the confusion that overcomes anybody attempting to establish an all-encompassing connection between private experiences and recent history. In this production I hear the voice of the engaged, right-minded citizen in middle age. He was a child during the Second World War, grew up in peacetime, discovered the Holocaust with disbelief, was shocked by the war in Vietnam and felt awkward about feminism. But he is not prepared to simply brush these experiences under the wall-to-wall carpet of cynicism or indifference. In bits and pieces, I glean from the performance that one cannot condemn evil without first identifying the evil within one self. Rembrandt and Hitler or Me is the depiction of a generation’s learning process. Ten Cate is not an analyst with a clearly defined standpoint. He is astonished by what is happening in the world; the television news is his primary source of inspiration. With the aid of electronics and dramatic performance he piles up a great amount of information in the hope that the audience will know what to do with it. It is not without reason that this ‘work in progress’ bears the subtitle ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’. Although a moralist, Ten Cate does not preach. The spectator’s brain has to work hard. The performance consists of different parts that take place in three auditoria concurrently. Sometimes they are connected. And each part also consists of simultaneous actions and projections. The large auditorium is furnished with marble wings, copies of the clay-baked army that was recently excavated in China and rows of monitors. Images and texts are quoted from various sources. The Universal Rights of Man are sung as a madrigal, Wim Kayzer’s probing TV interview with Abel Herzberg (in this context the wisest man on earth) is projected and American stage actors play the gravediggers from Hamlet. The characters from Hamlet, Horatio and Ophelia, also deliver other texts, including by Ten Cate himself. This produces a bizarre effect when a typically Dutch children’s experience from the Second World War is rendered in American English. The (Japanese) Ophelia makes the bitterest reproaches to Hamlet about his betrayal of women and both of Shakespeare’s gravediggers are played by women, so it seems as though the grave stands for history, which was determined by men. The quotes maintain a better mutual connection than in previous Mickery productions and are sometimes set in a different light by the performers’ actions. The quality of the performance reveals shortcomings.

The mediocre actors shout each other down, so much so that I only understood most of the texts after re-reading them. Ten Cate is a good organiser of the many events, but he is no acting director. An approach similar to Jan Joris Lamers, who always clearly displays the difference between the actor and the character, would have been much more effective here. I have only seen one part; I only have knowledge of the other two on paper. I cannot give a final judgment on the entire project. What I saw captivated and bored me and I still do not know whether this production is actually profound or merely simple, but the after-effects are great. nrc handelsblad, october 10th 1985

1986

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35 ‘Spilt Milk in Pieces’ [...] The American Mel Andringa, in collaboration with the writer John Herbert, makes an exceptional sort of theatre. It always deals with visual art, art history and theory, made transparent with simple examples. Andringa usually performs as a professor who chatters to himself and is slightly tormented, yet still blessed with self-mockery. In this performance he uses slide projections, texts and acts to process a host of philosophical ideas, which seem to fit together like jigsaw pieces. It is no wonder; Andringa is fascinated by the jigsaw puzzle. He is currently performing Sistine Floor Plan with John Herbert and a few guest actors at the Mickery Theater in Amsterdam. Like a second Michelangelo, he provides the Sistine Chapel with a new floor, but very differently. He lays a puzzle over the Renaissance artist’s geometrical marble mosaic, which he calls the mosaic of the people. In this puzzle, one can find depictions of a painter’s palette, a lorry, a cement block and a ball. He is not concerned with beauty but with the ideas behind the creation of art. Andringa is a conceptual artist and he makes clear what this vague term means in an ironical manner. The jigsaw puzzle was invented in 1760 by a London map-maker, John Spilsbury, who found himself left with a stock of maps. He pasted them onto mahogany, then sawed out the different countries and divided the oceans. He put the pieces in a box and sold them as educative toys for children. He attracted a following and soon people were able to use puzzles for geography, history and to learn the names of the animals. Educative puzzles still exist, but for more than a century the majority have been made for the purpose of pleasure (and despair) in a household setting. In the early jigsaws, the saw cut along the contours of the figures, their

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eyes and mouths, and the other important elements of the depiction. Figures were often sawn out of the backgrounds that had little to do with the representation – four-leafed clovers, bottles, bowls, animals – but they increased the level of difficulty. One important aspect in the development of the jigsaw puzzle was the invention of cardboard in the 1860s. Complicated patterns that were independent of the depiction were punched into the cardboard with sharp, jagged, curved steel. Every factory had its own designs, for both the representations and the puzzle patterns. The punching technique gave the designers the opportunity to make things increasingly difficult for the people doing the puzzles. These designers are mostly anonymous, even though their work frequently betrays such characteristic idiosyncrasies that, according to Mel Andringa – and reminiscent of the medieval miniaturists – one can identify The Master of the Springbox or The Monk of the American Greetings Card. Doing puzzles really took off during the unemployment of the 1930s, particularly in America. People had little else left to hand and every week they could buy new jigsaws at the newspaper kiosks, bearing various generic names that were all derived from the word jigsaw: Jig Jigger, Jig Jig, Jigtime Jigsaw, Jigee Sawee, Jig o’ the Week. Clubs and other puzzle centres were formed where people could exchange work that they had already laid. During long train journeys, passengers in restaurant cars could obtain puzzles from the conductor and many hotels offered their guests the opportunity to lay a puzzle in the lobby. For many years in America, there was a Mystery Puzzle of the Month, whereby puzzle-laying families could solve a murder case, sometimes with soft-pornographic undertones. Puzzles have been, and are, frequently used for advertising purposes or propaganda and as souvenirs. ‘The interest in art among puzzle designers has been consistent throughout the years’, says Mel Andringa, who has collected hundreds of old puzzles, bought for a few pennies in junk shops and from the Salvation Army. ‘Collector’s boxes were recommended with the texts All Masterpieces or Contemporary Art. These contained poor reproductions of good paintings, and in 1919 “contemporary” turned out to be romantic art from the 19th century and certainly not Duchamp or Picasso. The work of popular illustrators such as Norman Rockwell often appeared on puzzles.’ ‘Museum shops currently produce jigsaw puzzles from High Art: action painting, pop-art, photo realism and minimal art. There are also puzzles in one colour, red for example, which is called Red Riding Hood’s Red Riding Hood, or one in white with the title Snow White without Dwarves. The best “conceptual” jigsaw in my collection is in a carton of milk; all of the

pieces are white and once they have been laid, they form a pool of spilt milk.’

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The Methodology

‘A discussion about the methodology of laying puzzles begins with the question of what attitude one can adopt in relation to it. For the majority of people speed is not a consideration, unless one has concerns about one’s masculinity. In this case one might conclude that it is necessary to complete a jigsaw puzzle in four hours because that is what is written on the box. If it takes you longer then you are evidently less of a man. Laying puzzles is sooner an existential activity, a sort of labour of Sisyphus. You understand that the puzzle was once complete and now you have to push it up the mountain again.’ ‘To begin, I turn over the box filled with pieces, spread them out and make sure that they are lying with the depiction facing upwards, each piece separate. One important point is the colour of the background on which you do your puzzle. A neutral, grey colour is the best. If the surface is lighter than the pieces, then it appears that the eye is less able to discern the subtleties of the forms of the pieces and what is pictured on them. One usually looks for the corner pieces first and then the pieces that form the outer edge, which one can recognise from the straight cut.’ ‘Once I have laid the edges, I scrutinise the picture for a straight line, for example a horizon if it is a landscape; therefore pieces that display both blue sky and dark ground. Afterwards, like God himself, I divide heaven and earth by setting the pieces of sky apart, as I also do with the ones for the ground. You can also group the pieces by colour. I finish them off in colour groups, starting with darker tints and moving towards the increasingly lighter. The most difficult is foliage, because you do not know what direction the leaves are facing.’ ‘It is not only by colour that you can sort the puzzle pieces, but, how can I put this, by their sexual orientation too. I denote a round bulge as male and the accompanying indentation female. The maximum male has four bulges, as the total female has four indentations. I call a piece with two bulges and two indentations opposite one another a bridge piece; and have you noticed that a puzzle piece with one bulge and three indentations resembles a little human, with arms and legs in different directions? You also have these in sorts. The one resembles a chap in a shocked pose, the other a runner and a third a break-dancer. In short, I place the males to the left, the females to the right and add them in rows, like by like.’ ‘This demands a great deal of time, but ultimately the laying of the jigsaw will go quicker. You can see in one glance that a four-fold female does not fit into another four-fold female. For five years now, in America, we

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have had a national puzzle championship. I have seen them all busy there, the trained jigsaw puzzlers. The majority of participants are women, perhaps because laying puzzles is not a rational activity, but an intuitive one. The participants do not know what the puzzles look like in advance; they are brought to earth by parachutists and then carried into the competition hall. The players do not sit, but stand, frequently on bare feet, bent over a table like racing cyclists over their handlebars.’ ‘They sort the pieces with two hands at a time. Their eyes and hands work at the same speed; sometimes they wear a Walkman with soothing jazz music, which sets the rhythm. The best players lay five hundred pieces an hour, unbelievable; their target time is seven or eight seconds per piece, but towards the end it goes even quicker. They keep themselves in condition with 75-piece puzzles called “sprints”. Doing puzzles is not a spectator sport; you do not actually see anything and something happens only when someone suddenly screams upon completion “Jigsaw!!!”’

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The Aesthetic

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When he was ten, Mel Andringa received from his cousin a box of puzzles of aeroplanes from the Second World War, complete with smoke trails and rat-tat-tat-tat texts. By combining two puzzles he was able to stage aeroplane collisions. At the end of the 1960s, when he was studying at the art academy of the University of Iowa, this idea came in useful. ‘I did not want to become an artist; I was strongly influenced by conceptual systems. One could also make art with found objects and I remembered the puzzles from my childhood. It is a political act to use material that is within everyone’s reach, but which nobody thinks about when it comes to art. Years later – I had been in Bob Wilson’s circus for some time – I went to teach at the academy in Iowa. I received a bursary of three thousand dollars, kept some of the money and used it to buy hundreds of second-hand puzzles. I sorted them according to correspondences and this work demanded so much time that I got ideas while I was doing it. I jotted these down in a notebook.’ ‘Thus, by an intuitive route I came upon ideas for combining puzzles. A simple joke could be sufficient. I had a puzzle of the pharaoh Tutankhamen and one of a brewery that called itself the King of Beers. I replaced the Egyptian headdress of Tutankhamen with beer cans and merged the golden headdress into the background of the brewery puzzle. In this way I acquired a second work of art, a negative of the first, so to speak. What sometimes begins as a cheap joke can become more mysterious and interesting in the “negative”.’ ‘Sometimes there are two prints of the same puzzle that differ slightly. If you fit them together you get what I call a “stuttering puzzle”, it looks a

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little impressionistic. You can also achieve an outstanding result by turning one of the two puzzles 90 degrees and setting it vertically into a horizontal puzzle. I did this with a mountain landscape by Courbet and the portrait of a girl in a half door by the Dutch master – I call it “half-girl in door”. Because of the fragmentary planes the result becomes almost a Cezanne.’ ‘You can combine puzzles according to the most different, simple methods: you can exchange pieces, so that the result resembles a chessboard or a patchwork quilt. Sometimes you purely follow your intuition. Then it seems as though the shoved together combination is a normal puzzle with a very strange picture, clearly by an artist who seems to have taken a lot more trouble than is the reality. Everyone can make such puzzles: the art lies in the conceptual decision and not in the actual execution. This is what I like. You only have to assume that the material can be fitted together. You do not use puzzles as an artist would use paint.’ ‘Some puzzle combinations are systematic or conceptual, others incline towards surrealism. They contain illogical contradictions, which nonetheless belong together. For me this means that you have to give meaning to the puzzle with your mind. Our brains are ultimately instruments that seek meaning. That is their duty. I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Sometimes someone can make a remark about a puzzle combination of mine that I have never thought of myself. I could make such a puzzle again to better address what others see in it. Apart from exhibitions, I do not paste up my puzzle combinations and I rarely sign them. You could say that you can do nothing more with two puzzles than make a third. It does not go any further. The lesson that you learn from this work is that the human mind can conceive something, whatever it may be, as an answer to the given material.’ nrc handelsblad, may 2nd 1986

36 ‘Hilarious Portrait of American Hysteria and Paranoia in the Mickery Theater’ ‘Hallucinatory Theatre Wooster Group’ The Road to Immortality (Part Two). Company: The Wooster Group from New York. Direction: Liz LeCompte. Design: Jim Clayburgh. Performers: Willem Dafoe, Norman Frisch, Jim Johnson, Jim Clayburgh, Michael Kirby, Anna Köhler, Nancy Reilly, Elion Sacker, Peyton Smith, Michael Stumm, Kate Valk, Ron Vawter, Jeff Webster. Seen in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam.

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On certain occasions, though too infrequently, I arrive home after a performance filled with an intense longing to possess a different pen, a different medium and a different manner of expression. To tell you about The Road to Immortality (Part Two) by The Wooster Group, I would have to do a dance, half stoned, half drunk, bewildered and yet still with my wits about me. The performance begins as a relaxed evening of literary readings. Nine men and a monitor sit at a long table with piles of books before them, works by and about such figures as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, Arthur Koestler, Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts and first and foremost Timothy Leary, the lsd leader of the 1960s. The generation of the Dutch poet Simon Vinkenoog. They read out passages at random, relate the publication date and page number and hold the books in question up to the audience. At one end of the table sits an unsightly woman with 1960s glasses and a loud voice, the nasal tone of which has been crushed, as it were, by disinterest and boredom. This universal secretary, dyed in the wool, has the role of witness during a cross-examination. Thereafter, the seating arrangement undergoes a metamorphosis. Women in costumes from the late seventeenth century take the place of some of the men. They perform quick, malformed, half-audible, yet still loudly spoken fragments from The Crucible, a historical play by Arthur Miller. Villagers from the pioneer settlement of Salem, Massachusetts, have fallen prey to a religious frenzy and are holding a witch trial to exorcise the devil. Miller wrote the play in 1953, mindful of the communist witch-hunt of senator Joe McCarthy that was taking place at the time, and Stalin’s earlier show trial purges. Gradually, the historical material (the witch trial, communist hunt and the perilous lsd euphoria) is combined into a sardonic pandemonium of hysteria and paranoia, with musical accompaniment by The Kinks, The Velvet Underground and imitative Latin American tunes. The performance can be seen as a portrait of the United States, the counterpoint to the mass performance of the centenary of the Statue of Liberty. Puritan believers and their opposites, the tripping hippies, appear to have the same roots. Burroughs wears a cowboy hat and carries a pistol and shoots dead his wife in a game of William Tell whilst under the influence of lsd, once considered to be an agent for world improvement. John Proctor, from The Crucible, is brought to the gallows by a female religious maniac, which is also intended to redeem the world. It is no wonder, you may think, that a Republican minister is striving for the presidency of the United States at God’s bidding, no wonder that the puritan committees are planning to censor not only libraries but even encyclopaedias, no wonder that a born-again Christian is leading the world in a crusade against the godless Reds.

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The Wooster Group uses documentary details to create a theatre that communicates itself to the audience as an intense happening – forgive me the ghastly word. The spectator is connected to the New York energy. And yet the performance has nonetheless been designed with unbelievable precision and the acting is no less exact, although it appears that it is being made up on the spot. The director Liz LeCompte stems from the visual arts field. This could already be seen in her previous work – almost all of which has been featured in the Mickery Theater. The Road to Immortality (Part Two) takes place, so to speak, in the conference room at a hearing, the jury room in a courthouse and in the courtroom itself. Here the law court in the American style, with all its emotions, has become the symbol par excellence of the American manner of thinking: the pointing finger of the hysterical accusers, the handwringing of the intimidated suspects and the grating voice of that one witness, in this case Leary’s babysitter. And at the same time the performance is a hallucinatory high with terrifying, yet hilarious situations. Liz LeCompte uses the court session and the trip with the precise intuition of a painter. The performers behind the long table, furnished with microphones, books, papers and drink, remind me of the crowded Last Supper and other bible scenes from the Italian Renaissance. LeCompte couples the overcrowded throng of Michelangelo with the frozen emotion of Da Vinci or Raphael and she is able to supersede them because she works in the theatre with living models, each one a big personality with an individual style and appearance. This living painting is continually subject to change, there is almost too much for one to take in. But there is more than just the painting; LeCompte uses dance forms with great imagination. At a given moment, two women become gigantic puppets from the seventeenth century, one black and one white. Two legs hang from beneath their full-length skirts (belonging to the two men behind them). The puppets appear to hover and perform a lengthy dangling dance, operated by an invisible puppeteer; a rare, beautiful image of paranoia. One of the girls from The Crucible performs crazy pirouettes at the table; she is also the girlfriend of the tripping literati from the wild 1960s. There is another dance at the end; a common nightclub act, executed by a woman and two men who also have six sneakers dance beside her feet. Meanwhile, the aged Leary, who is disillusioned and now sees the error of his ways, has been speaking to a Vietnam veteran to let him know that he never meant for the lsd high to become an agent for murder. Because of his intervention, the last dance number bears the appearance of a great hangover. LeCompte’s Wooster Group can be counted amongst the very best theatre in the world. nrc handelsblad, october 1st 1986

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37 ‘Earthquakes and Teddy Bears in Expressive Mickery

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Project V espers ’

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‘An allegory of indifference’ Performance: Vespers, a sunset sort of thing. A theatre project by Ritsaert ten Cate. Performers: Dustin Evans, Huub Jansen, Otte Piersma, Fiona Seagrave, Joan Shangold. In the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam, through December 21st, except Monday. Vespers are a meditative prayer service in the Catholic and a few other churches. They are held in the late afternoon and therefore Ritsaert ten Cate has also given his vespers version the subtitle ‘a sunset sort of thing’. Perhaps this sunset also refers to the end of civilisation because the theme of this Mickery project is once again everyday indifference to the horrors of the world, which reach us via the media. The stage image displays churchy elements: a supper table at which someone is eating, a several-metres-high T made of wood, in which a TV monitor has been placed, a second monitor as a tabernacle. On the monitors (soundless) talk shows appear with prattling faces, a dying victim of the recent earthquake in Colombia, departing spaceships and a winner of the World Press Photo at work. Two actors reconstruct an extinct animal from figure-sawed wood, a woman builds a sandcastle and a man dresses up as a teddy bear. Teddy bears (Winnie the Pooh?) are a recurring motif, by the way. The performers play a party game at a table in which all sorts of questions of conscience are read off cards. Quotes from Joseph Beuys and Oriana Fallaci pass by on an illuminated news trailer. In contrast to previous Mickery productions such as Folter Follies, La Ballista and Rembrandt and Hitler or Me, Vespers seeks absolutely no contact with the audience, except by visual means. It is more of an ‘installation’, a modern form of visual art, than a theatre performance. This three-dimensional, extremely aesthetically constructed puzzle seems to me to be an allegory about indifference. The longing for the teddy bear in order to fall asleep peacefully reduces our conscience to a game. This is the message that I glean from the production. Ten Cate has already made variations on this theme so often that his otherwise meaningful preoccupation can be taken as known. He must realise this himself, after all he makes no attempt to persuade the audience of the importance of a societal examination of conscience. He again depicts what he thinks is the matter with us, and with this beautifully designed sunset meditation he says to the audience ambiguously: ‘Bekijk het maar’ (‘Just watch it/suit yourself’). That’s what I did. 21st december 1986

1987 38 ‘ Need to K now : “Epicurean” Theatre in the Mickery Theater’

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Need to Know by Needcompany Producer: Mickery/Schaamte vzw. Script, direction, décor and light: Jan Lauwers. Music: André Pichal. Performers: Grace Ellen Barkey, Erick Clauwens, Johan Dehollander, Dirk van Dijck, Wilfried van Dijck, Gerdine Fregeres, Simone Moesen, Ryszard Turbiasz, Afra Waldhör. Seen April 28th in the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. As the title Need to Know already suggests, this Dutch-Flemish theatre production possesses a philosophical basis: the need to know. This cannot be seen directly from the performance itself. It is true that the spectator is offered a key, but he can do little with it unless he afterwards opens the encyclopaedia to Epicurus. Of course, the spectator can also call upon his associative capacity and deduce the meaning of the performance by chance. Firstly a tv programme is shown that had previously been used in Mickery’s Kidnap. In this programme, a number of American ex-politicians, ex-CIA officials and multi-national employees deal with an imaginary hostage situation. It becomes clear that they quickly forget about the kidnapped man and his despairing wife to enjoy the negotiations. This demonstrates both a cynical and comical effect. Ritsaert ten Cate simultaneously illustrated the tv programme by acting out the situation with the terrorists and their victim in slow motion on stage. The director Jan Lauwers goes further. Firstly, he makes Theatre compete with Television: an actress tries to distract the audience’s attention from the TV screen. She plays a charming, shy girl. No tv addict could compete and a little later all eyes are focussed on the spinning pirouettes of the actress and her changing partners. The musical cacophony of a cellist and an audiotape overlap the talking on tv. Afterwards, the TV disappears from view and the spectacle is left entirely to the nine performers. Whilst standing in line they mumble a few fragments of text in English from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. Then we twice see two scenes that are very powerfully danced, ‘The Toast’ and ‘The Feast’ respectively; after which Anthony and Cleopatra’s suicide scenes are read very precisely and with meaningful silences that work in a comical manner. Thereafter follows a half-audible forum discussion, in which they consider Epicureanism and read out an erotic passage from a French book. Lastly, they

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stand for the final applause, which is momentarily delayed because Anthony must first complete his suicide.

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Chandelier

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The formal language of Jan Lauwers, who achieved fame between 1981 and 1985 with his Epigone Theatre, seems epigonistic. Need to Know frequently reminds one of The Wooster Group from New York, briefly of the flamenco choreographer Antonio Gades’ Carmen, and remotely of the work of Jan Fabre or Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. And on a couple of occasions Lauwers quotes from his own previous work (The Ostrich): a man runs back and forth beneath a swinging chandelier. Much seems familiar, but actually is quite different. Lauwers’ choreography, accompanied by the unrelenting pop music of André Pichal, is rough and wild. His direction of the performance is refined and funny. Simone Moesen’s work in Cleo’s death scene, for example, demonstrates great class. Here, Eleonora Duse performs – I name simply a legend – and we get to know it too. In her personage Lauwers combines the tragic and comic in a very intimate manner, so that one becomes still and smiles. Moreover, Lauwers lets it be known that the woman does not ‘really’ die; following the scene, the actress draws up her long skirts and simply walks off. This corresponds to Shakespeare’s text: ‘If thus thou vanishest, thou tell’st the world it is not worth leave-taking.’ The world is not worth taking leave of. Lauwers calls Shakespeare an Epicurean, like Galileo, Bruno, Vavini and Einstein. For Epicureans, the fear of death does not have to exist, because upon the moment of death the atoms that comprise the person and the world disintegrate and there is no longer any pain or joy. The ancient Greek, Epicurus, was challenged by Aristotle, just as the Inquisition cornered Galileo. Some muttering about the question takes place during the forum discussion in Need to Know and one can also read the text in the programme. There it states: ‘The admirers of Epicurus have clearly fared less well than the admirers of Attic tragedy, of which the opera is meant to be the reincarnation. Galileo was humiliated, Giordano Bruno burned and Vanini’s tongue torn out, but nobody did anything to Monteverdi.’ Lauwers’ staging can be explained by means of the atomic philosophy of Epicurus: the scenes remain separate from one another in terms of their content and their form. They should actually be performed all around the audience simultaneously, as though they are atoms sputtering about. What connects the different parts is the sensuality; I believe that the performers were chosen according to their sexual aura. This is expressed wonderfully in the choreography of ‘The Feast’: savage, seething rock & roll (though nevertheless different). Seen in this light, Need to Know refers

to the conflict between the Epicureans, who strove for passionate pleasure, and the followers of Aristotle. This is also where the connection with the tv programme at the beginning lies. The previously grand gentlemen on the tv are portrayed as oppressors of the feelings of passion. Necktie

This fact becomes clear because of the cabaret-like commentary that accompanies the programme, which is provided by one of the actresses. For every gentleman’s nose, pair of glasses, necktie or smile, she delivers a funny sexual explanation. Pointing to the tv screen she relates what is secretly taking place beneath the horseshoe conference table: masturbation and bestiality. Note well, women are absent from this tv version. In a roundabout way, Lauwers refers to the symbolism of the female principle (the earth) and the male (the sun). He apparently condemns the male. Anthony does commit suicide after all; Cleopatra does not. Lauwers turns off the tv and allows the theatre to live, with all its tricks for creating perspective. I think it is a shame that the performance itself does not make the philosophic background clear. Lauwers obscures it. He emphatically declines to give an explanation for his work. Rationalisation is prohibited in his theatre. Yet he still does not compel the audience into submission. In contrast to The Wooster Group, he abruptly breaks off every scene that might lead to intoxication. At the end, you are left with only the fragments. Or is this what is so beautiful about the Epicurean? nrc handelsblad, april 30th 1987

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39 ‘Political Adaptation of Sophocles’ Tragedy under Peter Sellars’s Emotional Direction’ ‘American Ajax: the lust of the lawless scrapper’ Ajax by Robert Auletta after Sophocles. Company: American National Theatre. Direction: Peter Sellars. Décor: George Tsypin. Performers (leading roles): Howie Seago, Sheila Dabney, Cordelia Gonzalez, Ben Halley, Jr., Eriq LaSalle, Raphael Nash, Ving Rhames, Tyron Wilson. European production: the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. Seen May 23rd in the Muntschouwburg, Brussels. ‘The place of action is America. The date: a very near future. America has just achieved a very great victory in Latin America. The leftist forces have

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been definitively defeated. It has been a long, bloody war, characterised on the American side by (…) a far-reaching animosity between some generals.’ The play that is thus introduced is entitled Ajax and was written more than 2,400 years ago by Sophocles. It was adapted and transferred to America by the New York playwright Robert Auletta. Ajax is the somewhat dumb scrapper from the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. The goddess Athena drove him mad because he once offended her. He mistook a flock of sheep for his fellow warriors, who did not like him, and then slaughtered the animals. When he awakes from his madness he cannot bear the shame and commits suicide. This occurs halfway through the drama. Consequently, a ferocious dispute takes place about whether his body should be buried. Sophocles must have written the play to teach his audience how to deal with the mistakes of history. Ajax is rarely, or never, performed. In the play’s title figure, Auletta discovered a typical American hero. His Ajax is a general who has placed himself outside military discipline and who, on his own initiative, wishes to continue to fight against other American commanders, here portrayed as bureaucrats who stand in his way. Clint Eastwood and Sylvester Stallone play such figures and George Peppard (A-Team) is a caricature of one. Auletta’s Ajax is not just a dumb old war-horse; he has a sense of justice and he is familiar with lyricism. Auletta uses him to crack a couple of hard nuts concerning American militarism and the political actuality in general. The play was written with an eye on Reagan’s activities in South America. One striking aspect is that the religious quality of Sophocles’ drama could be translated to the American situation without difficulty. In Auletta’s adaptation, Odysseus is an air force general, Menelaus a naval commander and Agamemnon the commander-in-chief of the army; all three of them are black. For the ancient Greeks, Ajax was of mixed blood, his mother was a Trojan and he was given the Trojan Tecmessa for his bed as a war trophy. This is also why Ajax is not considered full and reliable. Auletta gives his Ajax Indian blood and Tecmessa is a South American; therefore suspect in American eyes. This is also true of Ajax’s half-brother Teucer who wants Ajax to be buried at the military cemetery at Arlington. ‘You do not become an American in one night, you know, even if your father is an American general’, says Agamemnon to Teucer, ‘My family has been here for more than two hundred years. Humility and patience is required and the willingness to obey lawful authority. That is what it is all about in this country: lawful authority.’ In the meantime, the observer sees how unreasonable Agamemnon’s funeral prohibition is and how the concept of lawful authority is misused when the military is calling the shots. At the same time, you discover how ambiguous the attitude of the

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public is towards the American Rambo-Ajaxes. Is Ajax rightly a folk hero or is he the bloodthirsty fighting machine who hopes that his son will be just like him? Are not the military bureaucrats much more reprehensible? Auletta’s adaptation of Ajax deals with these ethical questions; this must also have been the case with Sophocles. It is an extremely political play, remarkably so because such critical theatre has been entirely prohibited in America for so long now. The American National Theater from Washington, one of the few American theatre companies that can more or less be compared to the European repertory companies, is putting on a European tour of Ajax, in a production initiated by the Mickery Theater and under the direction of Peter Sellars. The play premiered in the Muntschouwburg in Brussels on Saturday and one could clearly see that the partially new cast has not completely found its feet. A number of uncertainties were still evident in the mise-en-scène and the second half of the performance. During the applause, Sellars appeared to tell the audience that they would be continuing to work on the performance over the coming week. This aside, the performance is rock solid. The contemporisation of the classical repertoire has been common practice in European theatre for so long that one can again sense a longing for historicity; one compares Gerardjan Rijnders’ Hamlet with his Troilus and Cressida of a few years ago. In principle, Sellars’ approach is not new and to compare him with real avantgardists such as Robert Wilson or Liz LeCompte (Wooster Group) would be incorrect. But what he does with Ajax, within the conventions of the modern repertory, is extremely original and exhibits great class. He is an extremely emotional and musical director who does not shrink from the pathos of the popular theatre. Ajax is set up as a sort of court session, against the background of an inaccessible government building. The courtroom drama is a form that is primarily cherished in America and Britain for the consideration of moral questions; this form is also the frame of reference here. The judge is Athena, a call girl in a silver evening gown. Here, the Greek chorus is the jury, in the first regard: five black soldiers dressed in camouflage uniforms are seated on a row of chairs, each one with a microphone before him. The great innovation, however, was the casting of the Ajax role. The character is played by Howie Seago, a great big fellow, deaf and dumb and originating from the famous National Theatre for the Deaf. We first see him locked in a glass cage, bathed in litres of blood, a victim to madness. After he emerges from the cage he stands with his legs apart, huge and covered in blood from top to toe. He delivers his text in sign language; or to put it more strongly, swift gestures of an unprecedented fe-

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rocity and raw beauty. At the same time, the sentences that have been translated from sign language can be heard from the speakers and it takes a moment before you realise that they are being uttered by members of the chorus and later by Ajax’s wife Tecmessa too. This no longer bears any relationship to the pity factor of Children of a Lesser God. Gesture and spoken word form a whole: the chorus whips up the spoken word, just as Seago thrashes with his bloody hands. The effect is an unbelievably sensuous theatricality. Moreover, you discover that the chorus and Ajax form an organic whole. It is not Ajax as an individual who is standing trial, but the lust of the lawless scrapper. The fact that Sellars has the chorus played by black actors is another innovation. Their text treatment and the song of one of them, derived from the Baptist Church and accompanied by apparently spontaneous humming from the rest, lends the performance a general dramatic character that leaves religious folklore far behind. I have never seen such an impressive interweaving of the American ‘black’ heritage with Greek tragedy. Because of the great musicality, the chorus and the protagonist demonstrate a real connection, as must also have been the case with the Greeks. Following Ajax’s suicide, the tension unfortunately disappears, though this is primarily due to the structure of Sophocles’ play. In the completion of the drama, it is noticeable that Auletta requires more text than Sophocles. Any possible objections to this fall away in light of the earlier highpoints. nrc handelsblad, may 26th 1987

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40 ‘A Russian Dacha Drama in Rotterdam’ ‘Even the Trees are Crazy’ Cerceau by Viktor Slavkin Company: The School of Dramatic Art of Anatoli Vasiljev, Taganka Theater Moscow. The performance, which takes four hours, has been brought to the Netherlands by the Mickery Theater.

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Since Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard (1904) and Gorky’s Summer Guests (1905) it has been impossible to imagine Russian drama without the dacha. It is only there that one is able to express oneself freely. In the most recent dacha drama, Cerceau by Viktor Slavkin, a wistful group of Soviet citizens yearns for friendship in such a country house. The audience sits on either side of the performance area. In the middle there is a black wall, which stands at 90 degrees to the audience. On one side of the wall, the set designer I. Popov, a pupil of the great Czech scenographer Svoboda, has recreated an old dacha. On the other side one can see

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the rear of the stage; there three pianos and various floodlights have been placed; dressers and stage managers ready themselves to hand the seven performers their costumes and props. By displaying both sides of the theatre, the depicted and the real, the Russians reveal themselves to be a tightly knit group. ‘We have to grasp the edge of this table and hold on till the blood seeps out from under our fingernails; hold on and don’t let go! And then, when we have held on for long enough, when we are able to let go of the edge of this table without fear, when our hands have passed on the round cup of blood-red wine and everyone has held it to his lips – then we will hear the music of the heavenly spheres through these walls and the stars will shine upon us through the roof of this house.’ Seven people are seated at a richly laid table in the unpainted dacha. White summer clothes, white table linen, red-tinted crystal, fruit on a glass dish. Chic. Chekhov. Pre-revolution. They pass letters to each other with courtly bows and elegant gestures, as though in a nostalgic party game. Later, the blood-red cups go from hand to hand, as though in a circular dance. The ritual has something of the quality of a sacred communion. Apart from an old man of 80 and a young lady of 26, the company consists of people in their forties. They are all single Soviet citizens in a midlife crisis. They have come from Moscow to the dacha at the behest of one of their number to conduct an experiment. Could they build a new communal life together in this little house as friends, real friends? ‘Who do we have left but ourselves? We have only ourselves now. And here we are, a handful of people beneath one roof. Perhaps this is our fatherland now?’ This is the dream of the initiator, Petoesjok. Petoesjok means young rooster, a nickname that suggests something frivolous, infantile and helpless. These associations stem from Viktor Slavkin, the writer of Cerceau. In this play, Petoesjok cries out several times: ‘I am forty, but I still look so young.’ When I speak to Slavkin I have the feeling that I am sitting opposite Petoesjok. He is 51, and although grey, looks 20 years younger. ‘People have always thought that I was younger than I actually am. At the institute for railway engineers they thought I was a school pupil. When I went to work they thought I was a student.’ Viktor Slavkin worked as a building engineer for five years, before he started to earn his living as a writer in 1963. He is a member of the Writer’s Union and for many years, until 1984, he was an editor at the Soviet youth journal Joenost, the ‘head of the column Satire & Humour’. Stories and columns appeared in newspapers and periodicals, and one-act plays of his were performed in the student theatre and also published. In 1979, Slavkin came into contact with the director Anatoli Vasiljev, who staged his first

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major play at the Stanislavski Theater in Moscow: Adult Daughter of a Young Man. It concerns the youthful sentiment of the styliaki, the bikers from the Soviet Union of the 1950s.

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Infantilism

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Slavkin: ‘My own generation possesses two paradoxical characteristics: infantilism and weariness. The infantilism can be seen in the fact that we are subject to our illusions and the weariness stems from the situation in which people are continually worn down. One could say that all life from the Second World War to the present day has been the history of great illusions and not being able to make these illusions come true. Cerceau is a chamber play; it tells of the experiences of a small group of people and their longing for a communal home. But the play goes further than merely the story of this group. Petoesjok says: “If we all hold on to this table, we will see the stars through the roof and we will hear the music of the heavenly spheres.” This represents the longing of humanity for…’ For happiness, I ask? ‘That would be the maximum’, Slavkin answers with a laugh. ‘Simple existence is the minimum, happiness is the maximum.’ So it comes down to the longing for Moscow, which Chekhov’s Three Sisters also suffered from so greatly? ‘But with this difference, our dream reaches further than the Moscow dream of the Three Sisters’, Slavkin remarks. ‘Our longing is much greater. It comprises the very desire to live. The fear that not even this might be possible was still not a factor in Chekhov’s time. He was the first to write about the divisions within his contemporaries that arose from the loss of inner harmony. These interior problems also exist in Cerceau, but now there are exterior problems too. In Chekhov’s time it was unthinkable that one could destroy a whole continent in one go.’ During the almost mystical gathering in the dacha, each of the table companions from Cerceau delivers a monologue. What is remarkable is that these monologues do not derive directly from the characters. They quote from letters, as though the subjects are too great to simply think up off the cuff. Moreover, an everyday manner of speech would not suit a scene that is characterised predominantly by a longing for the pre-revolutionary past. The old man Koka, who is a broken-down patriarch, once again recognises his old love in the young woman. This Nadia, who wears a gown of the 1910 fashion, plays along with the role and both of them read out old love letters from Russian literature with passionate voices and intense gestures. ‘You always hungered for the flames of a wild, all-consuming fire, which you and I could burn in, together, closely intertwined till the radiant hour of death.’ Here, the aged Koka quotes lines from the symbolist Christian poet Alexander Blok (1880–1921), with much pathos. ‘Nobody

writes like that these days’, he adds. Why quote Blok and not Mayakovsky, I ask Slavkin? ‘It is not me who utters the lines, but my hero Koka, and he likes Blok and not Mayakovsky. Just as Chekhov is my favourite writer.’ Slavkin’s Cerceau is not a direct paraphrase of The Cherry Orchard, but the echoes of Chekhov can be heard continually throughout the play: particularly in some of the characters, the loose structure and primarily the atmosphere and oppressive sadness.

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War

In a certain sense Petoesjok is the counterpart to Astrov, the doctor from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, who so vehemently pleads for the reforestation of the region. Slavkin has Petoesjok paint the mental landscape in which the Soviet citizens live. He provides a war, but the text also sounds as though Slavkin, who wrote the play five years ago, was already aware of the Chernobyl disaster. ‘I cannot get used to the trees here, which have been driven crazy because of this war and the poison gasses and the explosions. They have lost all of their natural instincts and they bloom and shed their leaves a couple of times a day.’ And what is the state of the people in this metaphor? ‘This war is a war of the forlorn. Everyone on the mountainside sits alone in a deep concrete hole. And every now and then, when our helicopters and aeroplanes have driven the enemy fire back to the valley, we leap out and run to the next hole, inside which a huddled man had just sat, who there is no longer any trace of, not even a cigarette butt, because in this hell, you lose the desire to smoke.’ It is no wonder that Petoesjok, in his semi-legal dacha, wants his friends to grasp to the table of an idealised past ‘until the blood seeps out from beneath their fingernails’. The theme of the disintegration of society is also frequently dealt with in Western dramaturgy, although the analogy with war would not be used so readily. The difference with Slavkin’s Cerceau resides in the form. Trilogy of Return by Botho Strauss or The Wedding Party by Judith Herzberg, for example, possess a brittle structure, as though the disintegration has not only affected the characters, but the writing itself. Cerceau’s own writing is rooted firmly in the Russian dramatic tradition. The structure is logical and the characters are ‘realistic’ in their actions and speech. It is true that the present and the past are interwoven with one another, but any possible obscurities that might arise from this are overcome by differences in lighting and performance style. Boogie Woogie

The first act is characterised by a nervous choreography, set to the rhythm of Boogie Woogie, the music of the Russians of the 1940s. The second is

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static and characterised by a controlled elegance. In the third act, the characters are finally confronted with their disillusion and their inveracity; their movements are restless. The director Anatoli Vasiljev considers himself to be a link in the Russian theatre tradition. This can be observed here: Meyerhold’s choreographic settings dance on. Cerceau is founded upon the longing for the past, as though salvation lies there, even though this ultimately proves to be no more than a pipe dream. Slavkin and Vasiljev have their characters play out the past in the style of the past. This testifies to an entirely different conception of theatre than that of the New York Wooster Group, which is also a company that has dealt with a generation’s past, in the performance LSD. However, the Americans have radically broken with the forms of the traditional theatre, to be able to demonstrate the modern mentality in the form as well. In the Russians’ case, the past is apparently still desirable enough. Perhaps this is why they so readily make use of the forms of that past. The French party game, cerceau, is a couple of centuries old. In this game, people toss rings to each other and attempt to catch them with a long stick. This also occurs in the performance. The rings are flung over and past the dacha, which has been reconstructed on stage, and even right through the open windows. The characters are childishly happy and Petoesjok has donned a white wig for the occasion, the wig of a Rococo aristocrat. Before the game begins they sing a fitting song from the French revolutionary era. The much more recent past of Petoesjok and his friends is evoked by the Boogie Woogies from the 1950s, a song by Elvis Presley and other songs that were popular at the time. This is the period in which the Soviet youth committed a political act, and in so doing met with some difficulties, wearing check jackets, cutting their hair differently, swinging and, in contravention to all of the demands of social-realist art, swearing by Picasso. ‘I idolised Picasso’, Slavkin reveals, ‘I knew that he was good, but it seemed difficult to prove. It was precisely in these years that a lot of people grew disappointed, but those who were really convinced stuck by their opinion and prevailed.’ But are check jackets and Picasso not a little old fashioned for the contemporary youth? Slavkin: ‘This is precisely the tragedy of my character Petoesjok. The smaller the reason, the greater the tragedy. To put it even more strongly: people are currently more involved with small causes than with great ones. Whoever faced death during the war, that was drama. But a greater drama is the one that confronts the hero in Gogol. He worked on an overcoat for years and when it was finished it was stolen. This is minor, but it did cause the man’s death. Very contemporary, actually. I had a schoolmate who dropped his camera in the water on a boat trip. He went

home and hung himself. It was not about the camera; he had gathered all of his hope in his soul and the camera was the metaphor for that.’ ‘In my opinion the most important meaning in life today is this: to understand everything by immersing oneself in the nuances. Then you will know why someone hangs himself for a camera. This is where the difference lies between Chekhov’s heroes and those of the present day. Because of the media we know a great deal about other people. This information plays a role in our own personal lives. It piles up, piles up, piles up and suddenly it emerges in a small detail. Someone may think to themselves: “You must not be so weak, a weak person will not survive and I am weak; yesterday I was watching television and I saw how a black man jumped eight metres and how the beautiful women rushed towards him. That reminds me to be strong; tomorrow I am going to train too; then stardom will dawn for me as well.” You go outside, you toss your cigarette butt away and it does not quite land in the bin: gone all good intentions, gone all illusions!’

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Helicopter Pilot

The experiment of Petoesjok – played by Albert Filosov, the John Gielgud, or rather, the Siem Vroom of Moscow – fails. His dream was only a game. His male and female friends do not draw closer to one another. The relationships that are formed over the course of the weekend cannot be maintained. In as far as the characters still have dreams, they diverge too greatly and who knows whether they might not also be untrue. The girl Nadia claims that she is going to marry a handsome helicopter pilot. The Swede Lars, who can talk about nothing other than his foreign travels, might not come from Sweden at all, but from a Baltic Soviet republic and perhaps has never been further than the Thomas Cook travel guide. Petoesjok’s dream has become literature: he quotes a Korean fairytale in which poets come together in heaven. He refuses to give up. Nevertheless, a glimmer of hope remains. The hour of truth has passed and, as far as possible, the characters have revealed their true faces. The dacha has been boarded up again and covered with plastic. Finally, they decide to leave. Then Valjoesja, the most cynical of the characters, says as she touches the house: ‘I thought that we would now be able to live in one house together.’ And you understand why the dacha has not been boarded up with planks, as in the beginning, but rather with old doors. After everyone has left the stage Petoesjok unexpectedly returns. He climbs back into the dacha to play Boogie Woogies there forever. All alone. Dummy

Cerceau makes clear that the New Soviet Person, the ideal of the Revolution, does not exist. Slavkin makes no direct criticism of the system any-

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where in this play. It does not come up explicitly at all and this is also telling. But it does contain a fine metaphor, which could point to the deeper cause of the deficiency of the New Person. The aged Koka, who is a little crazy – and played by the formidable Alexei Petrenko – has bought a bag of dummies for the child that his stepdaughter is expecting. ‘Away with that rubbish!’ one of the figures cries and tears the dummies from Koka’s hands. ‘This is filth. (…) If you get the stinking products of the Rubber Trust Cooperative stuck in your mouth from your earliest age, you will spend the rest of your life hankering for a good dummy.’ Mother Russia has long ceased to breastfeed her children. ‘I do not defend Socialism and neither do I judge it’, says the director Vasiljev. ‘People these days do not live any better than in Dostoyevsky’s time. The difference is that the spiritual life was valued more highly then. Is the soul able to see truth? This is what it is all about, the spiritual life. There was a time when the Russian Theatre concerned itself with regional problems, family life and such. But there are many more possibilities for theatre if you consider people in history. I try to look at the history of the Soviet Union and do not wish to let it influence me.’ Apparently, it has been possible to express such independent standpoints freely in recent times. The conversations that I conducted with the Russians at the theatre festival in Stuttgart were personal and candid. The 45-year-old Anatoli Vasiljev studied chemistry, served with the marines and thereafter studied in the director’s programme at the State Institute for Theatrical Art. In 1973, he directed at the Kunsttheater in Moscow – with success – and in 1977 his former teacher Andrei Popov brought him to the Stanislavski Theater. Because of a change in the leadership in 1982, Vasiljev, and the group that he had gathered around him, was removed. The director Joeri Lloebimov took Vasiljev and his people under the wing of the Taganka Theater. There they could work on Cerceau. In 1984, Lloebimov fled to the west and Vasiljev was once again out on the street, but despite opposition and backbiting, Cerceau premiered in 1985. The performance caused a stir and was proclaimed the best of the Moscow season. In the meantime, the theatre system, which had become stuck in its ways, has now been modified, undoubtedly due to the new cultural policy. In addition to the established theatre, there was also a rich alternative theatre for many years, particularly in Moscow, but it had no official status. It was unjustly viewed as ‘amateur theatre’; the performances could not be announced openly, as a result of which it became dependent upon word of mouth publicity. Naturally, this almost illegal theatre was a great success, however much the bureaucracy obstructed it. Like so many directors throughout the world, Vasiljev resisted the established theatre with his urge to produce and his routine.

Vasiljev and his team, which calls itself the School for Dramatic Art, worked on the performance for three years before it was finally completed; of course with interruptions because the performers had to earn their money elsewhere. In Moscow, eight such companies now enjoy an official status and so receive subsidy. ‘Studios’ have also been made possible in the provinces. The glimmer of hope that was visible at the end of Cerceau has burst through. But would a performance such as Cerceau have been different if Vasiljev had made it now, under Gorbachev’s ‘glasnost’? Vasiljev formulates a circumspect answer. ‘Gorbachev’s politics are like an open door, through which one can see a landscape. You can exit through this door, but it all depends on the people, not on Gorbachev, who opened the door. All hope lies within us and is not dependent upon the promises of one man. Politics merely makes proposals, but the people make the choices. It is all about ideas, thoughts, feelings that come about in the moment in which you live. The heart must have the opportunity to express itself, but the soul is more conservative than politics. Important works, as Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy wrote them, are created independently of the question of whether or not existence is transforming. It depends upon the person’s spiritual life. The Soviet system makes no difference; the political world only creates an environment, and the soul must not submit to its temptation. Politics discovers an open door, but the life of the spirit remains as it was. This is the conservatism of the soul.’ But would Cerceau have been different if it were made at the present time, I ask once again? Vasiljev nods a barely discernible: yes. nrc handelsblad, july 3rd 1987

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1988 41 ‘The History of the Mickery Theater in Photos’ ‘Addicted to Memories’ Pictorial, A Photographic History /Mickery Theater 1965–1987 I can never really do nostalgia. When I have an attack of homesickness for the past, I immediately have to satirise my fine feelings. Memory, after all, is a mechanism for distortion. When leafing through the photo album, Pictorial, which is as thick as a telephone book and tells the history of 22 years of the Mickery Theater in black-and-white photos, many of the prints remind me of previous great excitement. But would I react so emotionally if I were to see the respective performances again now? In 1972, La MaMa from New York performed Medea in ancient Greek (Eu-

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ripides) and Latin (Seneca), so you could not understand a word. The audience sat on either side of the Mickery Theater’s upper auditorium. On the one side of the performance area, Priscilla Smith squatted as Medea chained to a wall. The other characters entered from the opposite side: the wet nurse, Jason, his new bride and the two children. The chorus stood behind the audience and carried lit candles. There was scarcely any other light. Priscilla Smith has many tones to her voice and she was even able to speak while inhaling. Perhaps the tragedy of the mother/murderess appealed to me, perhaps the darkly tinted performance possessed a magical power. Afterwards, I could not leave my seat and I had to cry, just cry. The company’s leader Ellen Stewart, La MaMa herself, came to give me a hug of consolation and only then could I return home, a little shaky. I had never previously experienced such a reaction. I saw the performance again two weeks later. I did not think anything of it; it was just refined kitsch. There is no point re-living a first impression in similar circumstances; moments of happiness or sadness are unrepeatable, do not even try to retrieve them, do not take the trouble; the next infatuation will be different to the last. Trust the sensation of the moment; mistrust the remembrance of it. In this sense, the hundreds of performances that I have seen in the Mickery Theater have taught me to live. The theatre is the pre-eminent place for the new day to obscure the day before. This very transience keeps me going. It is obvious that the new day stems from yesterday; every gesture in the here and now on stage, or in life, has its prehistory, but in the eyes of the audience, it is new; or at least it should be. Visitors to the theatre who fail to recognise their sweet memories in contemporary drama irritate me. Incidentally, I am addicted to memories. At home I have boxes full of them and Mickery’s Pictorial is precisely that sort of well-filled treasure chest. It is a photo album. We again see the Mickery Theater’s history through the eyes of excellent theatre photographers, the late Maria Austria, her pupil Bob van Dantzig and Oscar van Alphen in the lead. The second subject of Pictorial is Dutch theatre photography. Theatre photographers do not use flash; they stand modestly to the side of the performance and, improvising swiftly, try to identify their frames and click as soundlessly as possible. There is usually too little light and so the scenes emerge from their photos out of velvet-black backgrounds, the figures drawn in a fine chiaroscuro. Ritsaert ten Cate

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It is evident from the photos in Pictorial that acting must have been the primary consideration in the Mickery Theater. Only in later years did the actors’ theatre occasionally give way to what I call ideas theatre, and Rit-

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saert ten Cate’s own collage productions occupy a major part of this. They take up a very generous portion of this collection. I count as many as twelve photos of Ten Cate’s magnum opus, Rembrandt, Hitler or Me (1985), and I regret the fact that The History of Theatre (1972), by the Parisian-Argentine company tse, for example, is commemorated with just one, and not a very successful one at that. Companies such as La MaMa from New York, Traverse Workshop Company from Edinburgh, Tenjo Sajiki from Tokyo and Pip Simmons Theatre Group from London are rightly well represented. In the early years, La MaMa and Traverse demonstrated that acting in a small theatre, right in front of the audience, seems to be much more intense and authentic than in the large playhouses. The surrealistic Tenjo Sajiki and the socially critical Pip Simmons used far-reaching forms of audience manipulation; they seduced the audience into physically participating in their journey through the theatre building. These were amazing evenings. They press-ganged the public into what was until then an unknown role, namely the direct participation in the drama. You could not safely withdraw from the performance in your seat, perhaps to contemplate it later at your ease. The personal smile of the actor for the individual audience member immediately compelled you to adopt a (moral) standpoint in relation to what was on offer. Literally grabbing the visitor by the short and curlies has fallen into disuse. The division of roles is again as it was: we the audience sit there in the dark, while in the spotlights the actors do their stuff. I cannot bear to contemplate having a filthily dressed actor on my knee whispering obscene propositions in my ear, as occurred in Do It! by Simmons (1971). To say nothing of the Japanese actor in Ahensenso (1972) who blindfolded a randomly selected member of the audience, seated him on a chair and subsequently pleasured him orally. Such extreme cases are no longer to be found in the theatre and I do not miss them to be honest. But in retrospect they do form an indissoluble part of the new adventure that the theatre discovered for us at that time. The prints in Pictorial are accompanied by the title of the performance, the place of origin and the name of the company or the soloist, and are again listed in a register at the back of the book in alphabetical order. The names of the actors and directors are absent, unless their company is named after them, and the subject of the performances and the effect they achieved cannot be found in this book. Only the Mickery Theater’s partners of many years may talk about it, grandpa and grandma telling us all about the old days. Janny Donker, in her interesting (English) introduction to the photo album, suggests that the Mickery Theater cultivated a ‘secret conspiracy’ of loyal followers. Perhaps this is true, but I have never seen it this way myself. For me, every Mickery pre-

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miere was a new, astonishing, personal life experience, worthy of reporting to the newspaper readers. Without Mickery I would never have become a reviewer and so I am terribly sorry that this photo album is the only thing that Mickery has to offer the public this season, whatever the financial reasons may be. nrc handelsblad, march 18th 1988

1989 42

Sh at ter h a n d Massacr e-R i der less Horse by John Jesurun

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‘The Family Condemned to Itself’ Shatterhand Massacre-Riderless Horse. Text, direction and stage image: John Jesurun (New York). Producer: the Mickery Theater. Performers (leading roles): Rebecca Moore, Joe Murphy, Larry and Michael Tighe, Sanghi Wagner. Seen May 9th in Frascati, Amsterdam.

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John Jesurun, the New Yorker who has been invited by the Mickery Theater, drew the material for his performance, Shatterhand Massacre-Riderless Horse, from American history: pioneers on their way to the Wild West were attacked by Indians, and wolves were supposed to have brought up stray orphans. The threatened family: a typical myth of white America. Countless Hollywood films are variations on this theme. Indians, escaped murderers, extraterrestrial aliens, they are all intent on undermining the cornerstones of white society, not to mention sharks (Jaws) and birds (The Birds). This collective paranoia is present in Jesurun’s play, but – and this forms the second theme – the enemy is also inside the family itself. Here, the son is a wolf-boy and also a vampire; he has a taste for raw rabbits and had to run away from home. His father says of him: ‘A wolf in his heart. What could we do? He would have ended up as an amoral, violent, bestial, animalistic machine.’ As though the son could become a mass murderer. But the son vehemently denies his wolf nature, his sister defends him and his mother hints that the father might perhaps not be the real father. Now this son is certainly no wolf; this is just the way that the father sees him. And so without noticing we find ourselves in the classic drama of father and son, who are each other’s archenemy for the mother’s favours. This ancient conflict is briefly evoked by a variation of a song (by Pete Seeger?) about a fallen soldier. Father sings: ‘Where have you been, my

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wolf boy son. Mother: Where have you been, my handsome young one. Son: I’ve been with my sweetheart mother. Oh make my bed soon, I’m sick to the heart and I’ll faint, what’ll I do?’ We are once again in the world repertory, Oedipus, Hamlet and all of those American plays, films and soap operas about fathers and sons and mothers. Jesurun’s drama is left without a resolution. The son returns as the new father of another son who he in his turn views as a wolf boy. Sweetheart, mother and sister always remain the same in this ingeniously designed circle. The family is condemned to itself for all eternity. The dialogue consists of a poetic mishmash of surrealistic texts and foolish, cheap clichés from Hollywood. Blocks of text return as though in a score and the performance is also focussed towards rhythm and melody. What is surprising is that in Jesurun’s play the members of this timehonoured, covered-wagon family resemble decently dressed, municipal bourgeoisie in a flat. The threat of wild animals, which there is so frequently mention of in the text, is only in their imagination. A white curtain flutters in the window on a few monitors. Jesurun also encroaches upon the normal conception of time with the taut symmetry of the miseen-scène, the lighting and the great speed. Decades last just as long as the smoking of a cigarette. At a given moment, I feel the abstraction of the performance is impaired by symbolism, when the father and son have an argument while they are bound together by a noose. The five performers display great musicality and precision in their movements and treatment of the text; transitions from blank recitative to emotional arias proceed with lightning speed as though to demonstrate that there is no psychology behind them. The performance initially disappointed me; it was less mysterious than White Water, the play that Jesurun presented in the Mickery Theater a couple of years ago. The text passes by so quickly and is so American that the nuances only became clear to me later, after reading it. Nevertheless, Jesurun seems to me to be an original playwright and theatre maker and I am extremely curious about the next performance, Deep Sleep. nrc handelsblad, may 12th 1989

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Touching Time and Moving with the Pressure of the Times On the last years of the Mickery Theatre By Loek Zonneveld

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1 Prologue – Peter Schumann’s garlic bread Fragments – 5 September 2008. On the night after Ritsaert ten Cate died, Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theatre suddenly appeared on my screen. The Maestro was being commemorated, embraced and sorely missed on the website. Some short films immediately followed about recent work in progress, in the surroundings of Vermont. An exuberant testimony: we’re still there! A nighttime journey through our e-mail correspondence transported me back a couple of years. I had been part of Ritsaert ten Cate’s audience for a number of years, without writing about Mickery; there were other people doing that for the Groene Amsterdammer at the time. Ritsaert and I had been recalling and writing down memories of the Mickery era for a number of years; Bread and Puppet was one of our subjects in the autumn of 2006. 13 October 2006, 10.01am [email from] Ritsaert: ‘Bread and Puppet was stopped from performing street theatre in Amsterdam at that time. Years later, it was possible, but with the presentation of A Man Says Goodbye to His Mother, you know, that street act about the Vietnam War, we had to move to Hilversum. We presented The Cry of the People for Meat in Frascati in 1969. It was still a tobacco auction room then. Do you remember the atmosphere? Everyone was sitting there waiting for the performance to begin. And they were all smoking. The thick aroma of rolling tobacco mixed with cigarette smoke. Then a fireman came in and announced that smoking was not permitted. Peter Schumann suggested that one could also ask the audience not to smoke. I saw The Cry for the first time in Nancy, seated in the front row, pretty ridiculous by the way, with a Nagra recorder on my lap. I paid for the trip by making a radio programme. And there I was, at a performance in which there was not a single word exchanged. It was quite clear though. It could easily be performed again now in regards to Iraq. Later, we would bring Peter Schumann to DasArts. The reason for the invitation was partly to teach the students how they made garlic bread at Bread and Puppet. His stay finally concluded with a performance on the square in front of Central Station. Schumann is dear to me. It’s nice that he’s still about.’ End of e-mail quote, Ritsaert ten Cate, October 2006.

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Berlin – 15 May 2010, Theatertreffen. I wander onto the Bertolt Brecht Platz and see an improvised poster with those unmistakable doodles. For a couple of days the Bread and Puppet Theatre is to be the guest of the Berliner Ensemble. ‘Peter Schumann is supporting Brot im Hof’, it states. We rearrange our programme and buy the last tickets for the Probebühne on Saturday evening. They are going to perform Joan of Arc; the stage family has grown smaller, they’ve outlived their biographer (Stefan Brecht, the sonof, who had died around this time last year), the means of narration are still characterised by an astounding simplicity. Puppets of rudimentary form, with long cloth bodies, performers with dark cloths over their heads (as in Japanese Bunraku), holding aloft one or two sticks, which have a large head on (or, occasionally as here, a series of small heads), always that oval form, painted simply, with something strange and often sad in the facial expression. Scarcely any texts, and most of these originating from an announcer, and this is chiefly Peter Schumann himself, calling attention to himself with a hat, a tooter and introductory violin music. And at the end they served garlic bread. When was Bread and Puppet last in the Netherlands? That must have been the farewell (some said ‘requiem’) for the Mickery Theater, Touch Time, May 1991 (‘Waste of Time’ some newspapers wrote in an attempt at being malicious). Then they performed their trilogy Columbus: The New World Order, in which the discoverer of America was very unsubtly linked to Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. All around the Leidseplein. I remember a gigantic Grim Reaper hunting a bird with a scythe, somewhere in the sun-drenched Vondelpark. We are now nineteen years further. I embrace Peter Schumann in a cloudburst that breaks over Berlin. I take a bite of his garlic bread and we raise our glasses to Mickery and to DasArts. And of course to Ritsaert.

2 A Man Says Goodbye to His Mother ( from Bread and Puppet Theatre, 1969, based on the Dutch translation by Loek Zonneveld) Characters: Announcer, with a duffle bag, inside of which are all the props. He wears a death mask and is accompanied by a drummer. The Mother, in black, wears a white mask. The Son, in army uniform, is unmasked.

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Text Announcer: A man says farewell to his mother. He is leaving for a distant country. It is a treacherous country. The man needs a rifle. (The Announcer continually hands out props from his duffle bag) It is a dangerous country. The man needs a gasmask. It’s a very dangerous country. The man needs an aeroplane. As he is walking, he injures his arm. He receives a medal. He arrives in the village. This is the village. (The Mother changes her mask) The women make soup. The man takes his aeroplane and goes searching for the enemy. The people are afraid. The man is afraid. The people go to the fields to gather the harvest. They hide themselves in the houses. The man takes a match to burn down the houses. (Nothing happens) The local fire brigade has forbidden us from setting fire to houses, so we tear them down. The children are afraid. They crawl onto their mother’s lap. The man takes his aeroplane and goes in search of the enemy. He bombs the children. The children die. The woman takes her scissors and attacks the man. (The Announcer with the death mask guides her hand) She kills the man. The man dies. (The Mother changes her mask) The mother receives a letter. His body is sent to her. (The Mother takes a white sheet and covers the body) End

3 ‘The dead body gives instruction’ – H ess Is Dea d Mickery production, winter 1989/1990 De Waag on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam is being renovated. One room is being set aside in an improvised manner for Mickery in diaspora. This is the Theatrum Anatonicum, also known as the surgeon’s hall. Written

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high on the wall of this octagonal room is the motto ‘The dead body gives instruction’. Here, in the seventeenth century, pathologists dissected the bodies of criminals. This is also historical ground for another reason. It is in this building that the theatre maker Kees van Iersel began giving nighttime theatrical performances in the 1950s with his theatre company Test. The audience sits around the performers, absurdism en ronde; Ionesco without sets in the freezing cold; actors and audience members with their winter coats on. The space is waiting for a different host, something concerning the digital superhighway I heard, and downstairs there is going to be a chic restaurant. However, the space is currently being made available for a new theatre text by Howard Brenton, Hess Is Dead, H.I.D., a piece of documentary drama about the pre-digestion of sensitive information for political reasons: ‘Reality is salmonella’, is one text from the play. You can say that again! Our politics, let’s say our historical reality at the present time is a hotchpotch with a rib of beef on the side. It is Christmas 1989, the Berlin Wall has fallen, the presidential first couple of Romania, the Ceausescus, have been condemned in a show trial lasting 20 minutes and summarily executed before the eyes of the astonished cameras. I have just returned from a trip to Moscow, where the theatres primarily earn their money from the performance of what until now have been forbidden writers, like Tennessee Williams, but are currently being allowed on the waves of glasnost and perestroika. And with Jean Genet’s The Maids, played by young men, otherwise known as fags writ large – wasn’t that what Mickery started with in Loenersloot? Returning home via a stop over in Berlin, I was able to walk unobstructed for the first time past Checkpoint Charlie, in the winter cold of December 1989. A few kilometres further on Rudolf Hess had died two years previously, in August 1987, by hanging himself, the last condemned man from Nuremberg, the location of the trial of the bigwigs of National Socialism. This is what Hess Is Dead is about. Or rather: about whether the gentleman who hung himself, and had been in Spandau Prison since 1947, really was Hess. A few media experts were brought together in secret to present the news of Hess’s suicide to the world in such a way that the risk of undesirable questions from the press and public would be kept to a minimum. But the confidentiality of the commission was cracked, the widow of a deceased member of this secret society (who had been locked up in a psychiatric clinic) provided a journalist with information that suggested that the Hess in Spandau was not Hitler’s Hess at all, but rather a double. The revelations of this political thriller with numerous hidden meanings (‘who will write the history of those who have re-written and manipulated history?’) are partly delivered by means of videotapes and other documentary material that we are able to see on the monitors surrounding us:

six large ones and some thirty smaller ones, whereby the octangular space comes to resemble a panopticon, where one can no longer tell security and information screens from one another. Carly Wijs plays the disturbed widow of the deceased commission member wonderfully. Huub Broos, an actor who we often see in productions by (here too) the director Lodewijk de Boer, portrays an unadulterated villain. Peter de Baan, a director himself, who we are only very rarely able to enjoy as an actor, plays the investigative journalist who leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of vermin. The detached manner of performance is a success. We look on through the eyes of the journalist, as it were, who wishes to investigate the motives for the falsifications and mystifications that characterise the ‘Hess question’.

4 ‘There’s a hole in my budget’ – everything that rises must converge

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A project by Mickery and John Jesurun, Shaffy Amsterdam, April 1990. A couple of years ago, Jesurun hit me head on with the performance White Water, which was also a Mickery project. In this play, a little boy tells how he has seen a miracle. He is questioned about it intensely and at great length by people who wish to know exactly how the miracle occurred. This treatment proves too much for him. He withdraws his story. The miracle did not take place, he seems to conclude in silence. Meanwhile, the questioners have begun to believe in the miracle. Language as a weapon, text as a particle accelerator, Jesurun knows what he has to do. In his new performance he seems to suggest that everyone divides the world around them into two groups, the group that he or she belongs to, and all others. These are competing parties, divided by a wall that also separates the stage in two, white on one side, black on the other. The language that both parties use has a strictly formal character, the detached tone of documents and the impersonality of formal letters. Nevertheless, a vehement struggle is suggested, a science fiction battle between aliens who occasionally make use of computer jargon (re-entry, backslash), for which funny variations are then found (‘Prepare for the backslash and see how they like that one’). Everything proceeds rapidly, whereby a game is played with the misunderstandings that arise when languages (Spanish, German and English) tumble over each other in rapid tempo, sometimes via interpreters, who try to get the jump on one another. If the conversation on one side of the wall concerns ‘bullet holes’, then the people on the other side seem to understand that it is not about bullets but budgets. ‘There’s a hole in the budget.’ One of the parties is led by a man with blue shoes, who

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absolutely refuses to be addressed as ‘Your Majesty’, yet does act in that way. The other side is under the leadership of a lady accompanied by two preacher-like gentlemen. Everything and everyone communicates with one another via cameras and monitors. Mediation even takes place by figures outside the performance, or at least outside the spaces alongside the wall. But what the stake is in the mediation, and what the competing parties have to say to each other, remains an intriguing mystery, which you continue watching and listening to – the latter as far as possible because the Babylonian confusion of tongues increases enormously. One extra complication – and Jesurun does know how to increase the adrenalin production of the audience significantly – is that the whole thing, the complete stage image, begins to turn on its axis, just quickly enough and just often enough that nobody knows precisely what camp anyone belongs to and we no longer know how we ought to divide our sympathy and antipathy. In this respect, the title couldn’t have been any better: everything that rises from its place, will eventually have to return to it. Also, and particularly, in the minds of the audience members.

5

Desh i ma , a ‘poetic documentary’ by ping chong

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A production by Mickery and the Springdance Festival, May 1990

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Many of Mickery’s own productions and co-productions have begun with a short note (‘this is a quickie’) from Ritsaert ten Cate. The performance Deshima was presented in the spring of 1990 (the hundredth anniversary of the death of Vincent van Gogh) in the Sterrenbos Studios in Utrecht. I found the note that this performance perhaps began with in the Mickery archives: 27 September 1988, on Stichting Mickery Workshop notepaper, Herenmarkt 12 in Amsterdam, Ritsaert ten Cate to Ping Chong in New York: ‘I would like to know whether Vincent van Gogh triggers something in your mind and if so, what that is, and what you might want to contribute to a project?’ Ping Chong responded six months later: in Ten Cate’s summary: ‘Van Gogh? He peers around a corner, experimenting, checking whether there’s danger ahead. (...) I recall my shock, hearing Ping Chong tell me, after his first visit to Hong Kong, that he feels at home there. Home? But you’re an American ... New York! Sure he says, but a minority. A foreigner. Like Van Gogh in more ways than one. Perhaps this performance is about roots. About process. About a sense of loss.’ If a filthy rich Japanese buys Sunflowers by Van Gogh for the record sum of 40 million dollars, the first contours of the project that will be called Deshima become clear.

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We enter an apparently small hall and sit down on simple tubs, just three rows. At the beginning of the performance we hear music in the distance and the sound of engines close up: the entire bleacher is lifted hydraulically and moved through the hall, a legacy from a reference to the driving bleachers in the Fairground project that Mickery presented a few years ago at the Holland Festival. We ended up in front of a compact black box, a traditional Japanese space with paper walls. There were two conveyor belts on the floor that brought the components of the sparse decor and the performers into the space from both sides. The rear wall was used for projections. The narrator was the performer Michael Matthews, who was also the only one with a mellifluous text treatment. We wandered through the history of the relations between Japan and the Netherlands, America and Japan, Japan and Indonesia, via experiences on the Japanese island of Deshima, where trading relations between Japan and the Netherlands began to take form upon its conversion by the Jesuits from 1639 onwards. Ping Chong calls the performance a ‘poetic documentary’; statues shift back and forth on conveyor belts, historical and fictional figures relate anecdotes, here and there a dance is performed, and on the rear screen we can roughly follow where we are on the timeline. In terms of dramaturgy and narrative technique, Deshima is a little full and busy: the performers speak to us directly, whereby the connections between their stories dangle in the air somewhat. In the peace and silence of the movement scenes (‘not dance’, one Springdance visitor who feels he has been taken for a ride hisses between his teeth) often more is revealed than in the texts. So we can be happy that we have Michael Matthews; this Master of Ceremonies is a feast to look at and listen to. In one of the funniest scenes he explains why the rich Japanese who bought those Sunflowers by Van Gogh for so many dollars, is still dumber than the competing consumer from America: the Japanese only has one painting, the American has millions of postcards of the Sunflowers that he sells for one dollar fifty. Unique art satanically juxtaposed with art as an amusement object. Ritsaert ten Cate in ‘A Text for Ping Chong’ on the programme sheet: ‘Ping Chong creates soundscapes, visual meditations. His meticulously researched material is flavoured with a suggestion of immense sadness, even while his conviction that we can do better in this world rings through clearly.’

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6 am i here for them or are they here for me? – YOU–Th e Ci t y, fiona templeton

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A Mickery project in collaboration with Het Gebeuren, The Hague, June 1990 A somewhat overheated figure hisses in your ear: you are fantastic! In an attempt to be clever you respond: do you really mean that, or are you pulling my leg? Whereupon the overheated figure pulls a poker face and acts as though he cannot remember the entire situation. You are being messed about with, yet you are still not being treated as a member of the audience but as a ‘client’. Which is also somewhat justified: you made an appointment by telephone as though it concerned your doctor or (perhaps a little more apposite here) your therapist, you received a letter in which the appointment was confirmed and you were urged to appear ‘strictly on time’. Now you are received at a smart office where the receptionist does not really have any time for you, she slides a questionnaire under your nose with highly peculiar questions, you can answer, but it’s not compulsory. This is actually true of the entire afternoon that follows: you repeatedly go for a spin with new ‘discussion’ partners, actors of course, one by one, and chiefly one-on-one, straight through The Hague: a suicidal bum, an excitable lady who drags you through a frumpy clothes store, an intimidating taxi driver, a boy who starts talking about a shared bedroom and leaves you behind in a park, a secret agent who starts to interrogate you in doorways – and a whole host of others. In a building that’s being demolished your reflection converges with the face of a young woman, yet another figure nags your ears off about the functioning of your imagination, yours it has to be understood. You are continually thrown back upon yourself, somewhere in the city, but also in the questions that are fired at you. Responding does not seem to be the intention, and even if there is time for reflection, a question flits through your mind with a certain regularity: am I here for them or are they here for me? This must have been the precursor of something for which a card index box, a pigeonhole, a file and a gripping newspaper headline would be found circa 2010: experience theatre!

7 The welcomed death – Julius Ca esa r by Needcompany A co-production with Mickery, June and autumn 1990

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In the opening scene of the performance Julius Caesar (Shakespeare/Needcompany, direction: Jan Lauwers) it is already clear that the play is not going to be acted out. Snippets of sentences from Shakespeare’s opening

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scenes ring out from behind the music of Bach, alternated with complete dialogues from the play. A commentator announces over a microphone that this play could just as well have been called Brutus. He is the hero, or the anti-hero if you will; Julius Caesar himself already kicks the bucket in the third act of the play. Thereafter, the text follows the actions, fears and quarrels of the conspirators against the usurper, under the leadership of Marcus Brutus. Until their deaths follow, too. Friendships wither, plotters die ingloriously. Politicians, such as the later rivals Marcus Antonius and Octavius Caesar, survive on this battleground by means of a hollow yet tellingly deployed, strategic and economic use of language. Not a word too many. The famous eulogy next to Caesar’s bier is long, populist in tone and rhetorically brilliant. The one given beside the lifeless corpse of the conspirator Brutus (who falls upon his own sword at the end) is succinct – the words and sentence constructions are interchangeable here. Just as Octavius’ memento mori at the end of this Shakespeare text closely resembles the In Memoriam that he delivers for Marcus Antonius at the end of Antony and Cleopatra, another tragedy of Shakespeare’s. The Swan of Avon is merciless when ridiculing the political turbo-language-avant-la-lettre. Giving the heave-ho to rulers does not really pay, appears to be the message. In one of the first scenes from the play, the coup conspirator Cassius says of Julius Caesar, the object and subject of the coming putsch: ‘Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/Like a Colossus, and we petty men/Walk under his huge legs and peep about/To find ourselves dishonourable graves.’ The characters in Lauwers’ performance of Julius Caesar no longer peep about for their graves, they long for them. The value of friendship and the importance of the political act have become interchangeable, they fuse in the disinterested nullity of death. When Brutus’ wife Portia dies, she coquettishly delays all attempts by the survivors to appear in any way worthy. Jan Lauwers acknowledges this in an interview: ‘Shakespeare has written so many true things.’ This has to be said! The audience is waiting for the supplemental value. Lauwers has previously demonstrated that he can create performances with a great deal of supplemental value. The text of Julius Caesar contains the truth of Shakespeare’s theatrical argumentation in the marble construction of his plot and in the hard construction of his conflicts. Together with Coriolanus, it is his most clear exposition about the reason of state versus individual doubts and self-interest. Conspirators versus despots, politicians versus coup members, the individual conspirator versus the concerned spouse, conspirators amongst themselves – an amalgam of conflicts. Jan Lauwers shows little of this. He uses Shakespeare’s scaffolding for a series of numbers. They remain in large part incomprehensible because they are staged without conflicts and interests. Like Marcus Antonius’ famous eulogy: ‘For

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Brutus is an honourable man;/So are they all; all honourable men’ – it is spoken like a sermon by minister Gremdaat (‘Honourable, do you know that word?’). The text is diluted, reduced to a number. This is not enough. Surveying everything, it all looks pretty hollow, this nursery of disinterested death. In the light of death every endeavour is bathed in mortality. With all respect, this statement as an interpretation of a theatre performance is sentimental, certainly if the base is absent, by continually evading the power of the chosen text. This is how I experienced this Julius Caesar. As one great flanking movement. One rocks oneself into the paradise of death on a rocking horse. Easy. And as far as I’m concerned: quickly forgotten. If you wish to fight against Shakespeare’s image of death, then that entails a battle against the fullness of his conflicts. Or else don’t choose Shakespeare. Or offer something in return. At least something more than this: through suffering we provide knowledge of the welcomed death.

8 ‘She left no traces, like water on the sand’ – She Who

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Once Was the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife by Love Theatre

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Mickery production, September 1990 At the time, Ritsaert ten Cate was involved in getting Peter Halasz, the founder of Love Theatre, out of communist Hungary. Halasz: ‘He looked us up quite often there. He provided us with a sort of safety net by ensuring that we were written about. He printed our scripts in Holland. He helped in many regards. And because he was respected, we were given more respect too. He also helped us to get out of Hungary. Just by inviting us. We needed work. We settled in Paris. And we put on our first performances here in Amsterdam.’ The first text from the performance is delivered by the man behind the small table in front of the stage, Seth Tillet, the narrator, who is also the director: ‘And now. Let’s drive our chariot through the bones of the dead.’ Then the curtain rises on She Who Once Was the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife. Goldie Roth, the central character in this tale, lies in bed. She is the grandmother of Peter Halasz, who also wrote the story. And she is also played by him, wearing a worn-out nightgown and with a shabby grey wig. She hauls herself out of bed, shuffles through the room, slips on spilt milk, searches for a means to undo her shoelaces, presses a cushion against the back of her dilapidated armchair, and whilst doing all this falls eight, ten, or twelve times. The man behind the table in front of the stage reads in a few seconds from the script how much time each action and stumble is going to cost Goldie Roth. Meanwhile Halasz executes these actions; the narrator waits, he does not even look around, he knows how long it is go-

ing to take. The performance makes time tangible, uncomfortably, painfully tangible, until it hurts your eyes. Yet it is also slapstick, high-level slapstick. Halasz refers to it as Yiddish vaudeville humour, fast, quickwitted, anarchic, and this is how it looks, the silent Buster Keaton with live commentary by the Marx Brothers. During the course of the performance we begin to feel that this is the depiction of the last, slow and fearful hours of Halasz’s grandmother Goldie Roth. The moment of her death approaches and then a miracle occurs. The old woman builds a tower of tables and chairs, she sits on top of that tower on a little chair and leafs through a little book. Then she falls. The narrator steps on to the stage. The only thing that he does is pick up that notebook. He does have to pass on her story after all. He can do nothing more for her. This is the end of the performance; as a spectator you feel that she will remain with you for a very long time, perhaps because of that inconceivable matter-of-factness, which strikes the spectator smack in the face and in their sense of their own future. For what we see is the inevitable fate that awaits us all. A Nobody who sits down for the last time. As the narrator summarises: ‘Besides this story, no one recalls what she did on this earth. She left no traces, like water on the sand.’

9 ‘No grave can save me from my youth’ – BAK-Truppen performs W h en W e Dea d Awa k en by Ibsen

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Mickery in Felix Meritis, March 1990 bak-Truppen from Norway is the name. It is Norwegian for ‘behind’, or rather: ‘rear(guard)’. Irony? Obstinate denial of an avant-garde status? Undoubtedly. They always present anything but drowsy ladies’ and gentlemen’s theatre. The last time they were here they performed Germania Death in Berlin by Heiner Müller. I remember a wall covering the entire breadth of the performance area, with a whole lot of shaven boys’ heads sticking out over the top of it. Their national playwright is Henrik Ibsen. I once caught a glimpse of bak-Truppen in a park in Berlin. They were playing a game of football between the Ibsen women and the Strindberg men (the national playwright of the neighbours, Sweden). There was no rhyme or reason to it. The final score was 3-5. The idea seemed funny. I had to laugh most at the linesmen. bak-Truppen is now devoting three evenings to performing the last play by Henrik Ibsen, When We Dead Awaken. Don’t rush to the bookcase, reader and potential spectator, the performance is a collage of ‘actions, poetry and sound’ around the Ibsen text. And don’t immediately think: I can’t make it this evening. They start at seven o’clock

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and you will find yourself standing outside again approximately 40 minutes later. The premiere achieved a record of 36 minutes and 16 seconds. A performer divulged this just before the applause. I did hear it correctly, he spoke in English. The rest of the performance is in Norwegian. An English summary of the text is handed out in advance. So you can quickly skim through what is going to happen, or later, at home, read what you didn’t understand in the theatre. There is currently an international run on the later plays of Henrik Ibsen. In the season 1990–1 there are as many as three in the repertoires of various Dutch companies, and it is also meat and drink in Germany. Admittedly, they are high-level texts. Mature artists deep into their seventies look back matter-of-factly and without hope on their artistic calling. In When We Dead Awaken, this artist is the sculptor Rubek, who has always sought beauty and perfection in his work, and only towards the end of his life realises that he has never been able to deal with real life and love (the spiritual and the physical). His marriage is on the rocks, he is a national celebrity for his group sculpture The Day of the Resurrection (this is what Ibsen first wished to name the play), filthy rich, restlessly living on a Norwegian fjord, searching for the woman who had once been the model for his masterpiece. He finds her. But she is ‘dead’. Her soul has been sucked out by Rubek’s loveless priority for his artistic calling. While Rubek’s young wife goes on a bear hunt with a somewhat plump plebeian, Rubek and his soulless model head to the mountains and die in an avalanche. Death as an unlived life, this is what this swansong is about; and it is written in almost unreal language. bak-Truppen turns this story into an open, loosely assembled collage about the struggles of a young troupe of people and how they attempt to maintain the equilibrium of life, love and art. There are only snippets of the original to be discerned in this almost clumsily acted performance. It is made up of text excerpts raked together, but is not un-comically performed, by the way. And as for the rest, it is primarily images. An upside-down tent represents the avalanche. A papier-mâché plinth represents the sculptor’s chiselled masterpiece. And the wigged rake on darling red cross-country skis must be the bear hunter. I do not know for sure. Is the wonderfully whooshing harmonica the wind in the fjords? An enormous hook with a speaker fixed on top of it, emitting some Schwitters sounds – yes they really seemed to be the voices from the grave that Ibsen’s characters continually talk about! Or not? Meanwhile, what I observe – associatively, broodingly – is a rather cheekily depicted conflict between respect for, and resistance to, the great Norwegian writer. He was an old sorehead, but he wrote it all down so beautifully, seems to be the attitude. Once again: irony? bak-Truppen presents its collage of ‘actions, poetry and sound’ with such bloody earnestness that the execution often unashamedly reduced me to laughter.

Just like those haiku, freely after Ibsen, which suddenly pop up somewhere in the text: ‘Sun, moon/what a misery/Sleep is simple/Dreaming is easy’. What else are you supposed to do with such a Himalayan figure as the pride of the national theatre? Undermine him with a costume chest ransacked with childlike naivety, seems to be bak-Truppen’s answer. Or loudly applaud and honour him with a windblown credo, ‘in Ibsen’s name’: ‘the law of rejuvenation states: no grave can save me from my youth’. I think that this is by Heiner Müller. Well anyway. The pearls of wisdom are scattered about just as lightly as the rapidly evaporating imagery in this theatre happening. I had to think a great deal about the pride of our national theatre. What would happen if Heijermans were roughly renovated into performance in the rear(guard) of the avant-garde?Mother Kniertje with a hornpipe jig and a sailor’s two-step? By the way, they are also making something new in the domed auditorium of Felix Meritis, where When We Dead Awaken was also put on. The group recently presented their ‘scenes and attempts’, work in progress thus. A space without décor, a lot of things scattered about here and there, a table with apparatus, an audience that has to find its own way, short fragments, a real working performance. Rehearsal as part of what is being presented. If the ‘result’ remains just as loose as it was during the ‘scenes and attempts’, it promises to produce some wonderful evenings. Planned for Touch Time, the Mickery farewell in May 1991.

10 ‘Work in progress’ is no longer a process, it is the

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product – Touch Time, a sail past by Mickery, not a farewell, May 1991

The tone of the dramaturg and theatre studies specialist Mieke Kolk sounds somewhere between bitter and melancholy. She writes about Mickery’s farewell in the theatre journal Toneel Theatraal: ‘Particularly in recent years there has been a great deal of bickering about the function of Mickery within Dutch theatre, in particular with subsidisers. Nobody has actually attempted to make themselves guilty of murder, but they have nevertheless committed a slow act of strangulation, whereby ultimately the head did drop off the body. It is now being offered to us on a silver platter. And look: it’s laughing.’ Ritsaert ten Cate’s tone is realistic, almost fiercely pragmatic. His statement of principles for Touch Time observes that in the arts too we are finally pan-European, on the threshold of globalisation, but we are also gruesomely production fixated. The performing arts ‘are being devoured more swiftly than they can be produced, the plant is being ripped from the field while it is still growing, as it were.’ Ten

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Cate continues: ‘the result: less time, less money, and a rapidly disappearing sense of the necessity for cultivation, for nourishment as a factor that also needs to be present. I have grave doubts about what the long-term consequences of all this might be in regards to artistic, cultural growth, if only wafer-thin backing is left behind. Whoever looks at producers and presenters these days will see the faces becoming more expressionless. It is becoming increasingly difficult to guess what is going on behind that mask. We remember the themes, but they are no longer played.’ Ten Cate reminds us copiously that it is once again time to stammer and to stutter. ‘Who knows whether our salvation will lie with what enables us to devote attention to the smallest things in our immediate environment. Now, not tomorrow. Actually, we only needed to make everything extremely personal again. To really touch one another. Not just to ask how it’s going, while actually we are already heading towards our newest and most pressing obsession. Perhaps even listen to the answer, and keep asking questions; attempt to listen unconcerned, and without feeling that we immediately have to have the one soul-saving answer ready to resolve the problem. It could at least introduce a new behavioural pattern, on the basis of which we might carry on for a while, a basis that could be fit together more tightly in order to allow us to build something decent for the immediate future.’ Somewhere in the Mickery archive I found Ritsaert ten Cate’s text, which was wonderfully printed on handmade paper. Searching backwards I also discovered another, from a year earlier. One year later, in a speech about theatre space and stage architecture (12 March 1990), a prelude to Mickery’s sail past (not a farewell!), Ritsaert ten Cate states that our dreams as mentioned in the context above should also be given a space. Not woolly, but rather realistic, whereby he – as so often – quotes Winnie de Pooh: ‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, Piglet asked, what is your first thought? What can I have for my breakfast, Pooh answered. And you, Piglet, what is the first thing you think about? I always think: what remarkable things are going to happen today? said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. That is the same, he said.’ Ritsaert ten Cate continues: ‘I like to quote Joseph Beuys even more, saying: Wir mussen uns die Kathedrale machen.’ The motto for Touch Time is also derived from Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), from the book Block Beuys, a text that the visual artist wrote for himself:

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Die einzige Genialität die ich besitze ist die, dass ich

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mich mit dem Druck der Zeit bewege, während andere sich dagegen bewegen. Ritsaert ten Cate: ‘What is it all about, is the question that Beuys asks himself (and us?): Was ist der Druck der Zeit? We would like to present our programme in the area that lies between the answer and the question. Touch Time aims to make use of the genius of a series of contemporary creative talents who move with the pressure of the times. Resistance is already too late. Going along with it all is an energetic, inspiring activity, which can be experienced by everyone in a festive manner. Whether you are presently on stage, or seated in front of it. Touch time, make it tangible, without bringing it to a stop (as though that were even possible). Time that is spent in the theatre and also time that is spent on the many café terraces around the Leidseplein. This is a debate that could last ten days if undirected.’ In an interview with the newspaper Het Parool, right before the kickoff of Touch Time, Ten Cate spoke of a ‘group exhibition’ about the present moment. The opening performance, Brace Up!, by The Wooster Group takes place in the same auditorium that Toneelgroep Amsterdam later uses for Anne Frank – The Exhibition, at the end of the manifestation, a preliminary study for a project that is still in the pipeline – and which will, albeit in a totally different form, still be realised, in the shape of two Rijnders performances: Count Your Blessings (1993) in Amsterdam and its environs, and Hun Blues (1996) in Berlin. The American company is showing a performance that is already on tour and will be visiting another five European festivals in addition to Amsterdam, yet which can nevertheless still be called a work-in-progress. Toneelgroep Amsterdam is showing something in the early stage of what could become a work-in-progress. Bringing these two clubs together. Ten Cate: ‘You talk to each other, you admire each others’ work; let us bring you together for once. That could not be anything but inspiring.’ Asked about the quality criterion for the selection of the performances, his answer is: ‘Did you come out differently to the way you went in? Did it have meaning? Did something happen to you?’ I was more or less warned in advance about Ivan Szendro, who was once a celebrated actor in the Hungarian national theatre company in Budapest. He has become a shaman of a tribe that is thousands of years old, the Magyars, actually the forefathers of the Hungarians, who lived in the border region with Romania and were ultimately wiped out by the Ceausescu regime. Ivan Szendro tells their stories during Touch Time, in one of the

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spaces in the Melkweg, and it was for these stories that I came. For a shaman, Szendro looks wonderfully everyday; only his sumptuous headdress reminds one of distant regions and former times. There is a backcloth, there is a bicycle, he has a big stick – nothing else, only that man and his hypnotising manner of narration. He begins calmly with that old tale from Transylvania. The protagonist of The Judge of Blood, as this adventure is called, is the God with the Dog’s Head; the judge of blood with his werewolf daughter and his terrified vassals, the Dracula-like chatelaine, who is named Haynau, but in Szendro’s coarse, unruly English is continually hailed as ‘Hayno!!’, that magical word with which wild dogs can be kept at a distance, and devils and werewolves warded off: ‘To carry it out/to let it be known/Beyond the river Szamos/Beyond the river Danube/Over the threshold of his house/Of his land/Far away/His evil name/All over the world’. Szendro is a lively narrator, if you cannot understand him you can ‘read’ the story from the gestures of that twisting body. There is even more ‘narrative theatre’ to be seen in Touch Time. She Who Once Was the HelmetMaker’s Beautiful Wife by Peter Halasz and his Love Theatre is back again. And at the Balie, the British actor, writer and director Ken Campbell is performing a new and revised version of his solo Furtive Nudist (1989), which refers to a story at the beginning of the performance: Campbell wanders alone through the dunes and suddenly feels a great urge to become ‘at one, unified with the dunes’, to drift through the dunes naked. It seems like a memory of youth, but it is veiled, and does not correlate to a specific occasion when he really did this as a boy. In his opinion he has drifted too far away from nature for such a tangible memory. For him, the story of the ‘furtive nudist’ is a hyper-personal, unparalleled erotic association with a scene from a book by Karl May. This association is characteristic of this performance, which in fact is a long stream of thoughts and images, of which the meaning seems to take root in the thoughts that you have about the performance as a spectator afterwards. This is the way Campbell himself is put together: he can no longer see or hear anything without associations tumbling over each other, and also visions and primarily signs and portents. The scene in which he is drunk is wonderful: he steps out of his body and watches himself. He can no longer look at a pile of stones without hearing voices crying out that the stones would dearly love to be dragged away. Every detail of the story refers to another detail, and the entire story seems to deal with the limited range of our perception. Anything but dull, extremely bizarre and extraordinarily funny.

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11

A n ne Fr a n k – Th e Ex h i bi tion , Toneelgroep Amsterdam

He had taken account of the solemn May 4th mood, more so: he had counted upon it, but Gerardjan Rijnders thought it was a little scary that it was so quiet. And it was quiet. When entering the space in Theater Bellevue, we no longer saw theatre but an exhibition, rows of display cases, subdued light, objects from the life of Anne Frank, or at least it seemed so: photos, dolls, a biscuit tin, cards with strange spidery handwriting (thus unreadable) referring to, yes to what actually, to nothing, or rather, to ourselves, to pre-programmed behaviour, perhaps to that scary silence. This preliminary study plays a sly game with our conditioned reflex, which goes approximately like this: Anne Frank = commemoration of the dead = sacred silence of (indeed) May 4th = a prohibition on jokes about Jews. (‘Do you know the way to the Anne Frank House?’ ‘Hey, look for your own safe house!’ - was signed: Ischa Meijer.) It was only with the arrival of the Jewish Cookies, with the hard to decipher caption: ‘the famous Jewish Cookies’, that the suspicion broke loose (and in one case laughter). Meanwhile folding chairs were brought in from the side, we sat ourselves down obediently, above the stage a series of monitors flashed on, the safety curtain in the stage opening went up. On the monitors: a great deal of wreath laying, a weapons factory, Anne Frank in Hollywood, Anne Frank with Jeroen Krabbé, Anne Frank on Broadway, Anne Frank in a Japanese animation film. On the stage there was a table and chairs. One by one the actors from Toneelgroep Amsterdam entered, they sat down or remained standing. This lasted as endlessly as a silence and a stalled image can last in a theatre, while the monitors kept spewing their dumb imagistic vomit. Then the performers undressed. Beneath their coats and jackets with yellow stars they turned out to have endless layers of clothes on top of each other. The ostensible lack of will that accompanied this undressing says much about, yes, about what actually. About how a simple action on stage in the presence of a quiet theatre can say a great deal. About the collective history of a people which is ashamed, perhaps without saying it. Gerardjan ­R ijnders remarked afterwards: ‘I don’t show how terrible it was. It isn’t about soldiers, but about sprouts.’

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12 ‘Are you in character?’ ‘Oh, no, not at all!’ – Br ace U p! by The Wooster Group

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Opening performance of Touch Time, Theater Bellevue 14 May 1991

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The Wooster Group is of course the most prominent, experimental theatre company from America. By 1991, the members of the company have already been working collectively together for fifteen years on a complete theatrical language of their own, in which multiple media (text, mechanical image, movement, music) all come together. During the course of their work processes – which take a considerable time and are extremely poorly subsidised (co-producers in Europe have been their salvation for years) – everything goes. The director of the company, Elizabeth (Liz) LeCompte, attempts to discover things that really speak to her, which are true, genuine and beautiful, and have not previously been portrayed. But she is never engaged with recognisable characters. She thinks purely in terms of sound, image, rhythm and timing, of a play as a ‘score’, a scenario for a multi-media clip. In short, The Wooster Group, in both the ensemble and in the voluminous oeuvre, is the embodiment of what Mickery stands for and has always stood for: theatre with a finger on the pulse of the times. Kate Valk: ‘As far as the development of characters is concerned the work appears Brechtian, because there is no assumption of a willingness to believe in something. You must not become absorbed in your character. You are always someone who represents the character. I once read something in a book about Japanese Noh theatre. They say that the mask is the means whereby spiritual possession becomes possible, because you deny yourself by putting on the mask, and afterwards you deny the existence of the mask.’ Ron Vawter: ‘Sometimes I try to imagine that the smartest people I know are in the audience. This is roughly my preparation for entering the scene. Then I think: the smartest people that you could ever imagine are sitting there this evening. There are only seventeen people, but they are the seventeen smartest people. And so you are really going to have to lay your cards on the table and examine yourself here this evening, because they’ll know if you’re playing false in that process whereby you try to see yourself. I am not interested in a character at all, except on the level of making jokes. My only interest in a character might lie in the conception of someone else, a fictional person, as a trick in order to learn something about myself in the presence of an audience.’ Willem Dafoe: ‘For me, as a performer, the audience fits in with the simple belief that if I am interested in certain things, the audience will be interested in looking at them too. I think that this works in a liberating way, not having a single obligation to complete anything at all. But at the same time I love that old show-business stuff: I love entertaining people. The manner in which I think about

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the score of a play is, in fact, purely physical. If I decide that I should have a feeling about something, then I don’t feel anything. So rather than thinking about that feeling, I think about doing, about the action. The script comes into being during the course of that repetition. It gives you a sort of conscious, logical way of thinking. This is what always makes a performance so exciting for me: the actual and pure doing of it.’ The Wooster Group is presenting the performance Brace up! in Touch Time. The performance is based on Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov. Brace up! resembles a melting pot and an apotheosis of everything that the group has developed over the preceding years. Willem Dafoe, who, in the performance, wonderfully plays the brother of the three sisters, who has a permanent cold, once said of his first confrontation with ‘the Woosters’: ‘I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but I really loved it. It reminded me mostly of animation films. It had a sort of possessed energy, a new logic built from small pieces, from events.’ This is the way it always seems to be. It is true that the logic of Chekhov’s text is more or less adhered to, but through the combination of powerful textual excisions, strange dances, ‘quotes’ from Eastern martial arts, excerpts (generally no longer than a few seconds) from horror movies and other films with a high B-film quality, a totally new theatre poetry is created, light verse, which is wonderful in terms of timing and understatement. The first time I saw it at Theater-am-Turm in Frankfurt, it gave me a little high. The characters upon that cluttered, junk-shop-like performance area were constantly fixed in the sights by a battery of cameras and set on screen with wonderful slow-motion techniques – not Sergio Leone slow motion, it seemed rather like a sort of slow fastening, an accelerated slowing. Some characters or figures are not actually present live at all, but can only be seen on the video screens (like the old waitress Anfisa – a very beautiful aged mouth, with a chattering, loud voice, which is constantly in close up). The youngest sister, Irina, is wonderfully cast against type in the person of the 72-year-old actress Beatrice Potter, and this – particularly in the third act – produces true acting wonders. The Wooster Group has inhabited Chekhov for a year and a half, and they have built their own house around him, and developed an authentic intercourse with the writer. He would, I think, be decidedly content, in any case pleasantly surprised about what they have got up to with his text. Chekhov has been drastically renovated and re-modelled – the famous, emotive last act, for example, is treated as a parenthesis – but it was also well understood. The actor Ron Vawter plays Colonel Versjinin (who is in love with the middle sister Masja) in a subtle and sensual manner, and simultaneously with a considerable degree of distance towards the character. He says of the rehearsal for this kind of performance: ‘The performing

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actor corresponds with the character, there is no fictional distance necessary, although we did develop it. The actors form the centre of the performance and the fictions are woven around them. I became aware of the fact that it made no difference whether I was well trained or not. It was not about my ability to personify, or to be, Versjinin. The most important thing was that I found the ways to be myself as much as possible in a public situation. To be yourself in as interesting and intriguing a way as possible in a public space, that is what we actually do.’ So no fictional distance. Uncommonly personal theatre. Without imagined sensitivities. When the narrator Kate Valk asks Beatrice Potter in the muddled start to the production Brace Up!: ‘Beatrice, are you in character?’ this is a delightful knowing wink towards what they precisely do not want. The actress’s answer therefore allows no room for misunderstandings: ‘Oh, no, not at all!’

13 Stay on a safety island or take part in the traffic –

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epilogue

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The editing of this text is being done at a time when the arts are under fire in an unprecedented way. Ritsaert ten Cate would react to this attack, which is being fed by ill feeling and ignorance, with a scornful laugh in the first instance, while shrugging his shoulders (‘we’ve faced worse trials, mates’), then he would subsequently enter the arena armed to the teeth and start bashing about with mild ridicule and take part in the debate. This debate about art and culture was second nature for him; he called it ‘a face that is created through time, a countenance marked by experiences, mistakes and heroic acts’. In a speech from 1996 about the vitality that is required in this regard, and the wellsprings that need to be tapped, Ritsaert ten Cate stated the following: ‘Opposing opinions can exist alongside one another equally, inspire the debate, without that horrible pretence of consensus. Every arts’ plan, every re-organisation must rise above the apparent, and as far as I’m concerned, well-intentioned logic of it all. To arrive at something called inspiration. I once used grander words for this, words of consolation and grace. I was aiming for that unique understanding when you realise that you are present at one of those rare moments when something very beautiful and exceptional occurs between the performers and the audience. Moments of recognition, moments that, even unnamed, still give you the reassurance that you can go on with them for years. And of course you cannot utter words like consolation and grace without a slight embarrassment. Moreover, these

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words are not suited to the hellish world of consumption behaviour, in which there is the suggestion that art is merely a sort of safety island. (...) Societal practice demands both cognitive and emotional gifts. And art offers the opportunity to exercise these capacities in a manner that is entirely analogous to the manner in which the capacity can be exercised as moral intercourse with others. So states the philosopher (Ten Cate is here quoting the cultural philosopher, Joop Doorman; LZ). Back to the theatre. In my opinion, this exercise involves a form of active participation. An active attitude does, after all, give the most value. In contrast to passive consumption. In this process theatre already makes a choice: namely between staying on a safety island or taking part in the traffic. Whoever participates actively, enters the dialogue, operates out of the awareness that the more that you bring to the performance, the more you will receive. This is the playful intercourse with the arts that you had committed to, to achieve a greater humanity by means of this intercourse.’

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INDEX ARTISTS, COMPANIES and PRODUCTIONS 7:84 Theatre Company, 154, 224, See also John McGrath Abdoh Reza, 116, 146, 183 Akalaitis JoAnne, 19, See also Mabou Mines American National Theatre, 53, 273, See also Sellars Peter, Ajax Andringa Mel, 263-6 Sistine Floor Plan, 263 Angels of Light, 76, 103, 212 Enchanted Miracle, 103 Anton Robert, 58, 76, 90, 104, 183, 212 Puppet Show, 90 Atlas Charles, 152

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bak Truppen, 163, 299-301 When We Dead Awaken, 299-300 Bread and Puppet Theatre, 18, 157, 164, 191, 289-90 A Man Says Goodbye to His Mother, 289 Columbus The New World Order, 290 The Cry of the People for Meat, 289 Brenton Howard, 153, 160, 292 Hess Is Dood (Hess is Dead), 153 Breuer Lee, 19, 241-3, See also Mabou Mines Brith Gof Gododdin, 20, 43, 88, 122, 142, 147-50, 153, See also Cliff McLucas Burrell Michael, 163 Hess, 163 Camera Obscura, 203-5, 212 Maldoror, 205 Measure for Measure, 203-5, See also Franz Marijnen Oracles, 205 Toreador, 212 Campbell Ken, 72, 90, 164, 304 Furtive Nudist, 304 Roadshow, 72 Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, 22, 74, 76-7 Carroll Bob, 120, 172, 230 Children of the Night, 67, 74, 92, 169-71, 206, 212, 228, See also

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Pip Simmons; Pip Simmons Theatre Group An die Musik, 67, 74, 90, 92, 16971, 209-12, 218, 224, 228 Dracula, 67, 171, 195, 206-7, 228 Clayburgh Jim, 50, 79, 252, 267, See also The Wooster Group Combination, The, 200-2 Watch it all come down, 200-1 Decorte Jan, 120, 129 De Keersmaeker Anna Teresa, 129, 143, 272 Decorte Jan, 255-9 Kimbelijn, 255 King Lear, 255-7 Scenes/Fairytales, 257-8 Torquato, 255 Doe Groep Libi span, 211 Drawing Legion, 159, 163 American Nervousness, 159 Elephant Theatre, 19, 172, 231-3 Three Sisters, 231 Els Joglars, 40 Epigonen Theatre, 19, 120, 128, 156, 272, See also Jan Lawers; Needcompany De Struiskogel, 128 Incident, 128, 156 Equipo Teatro Payro El signor Galindez, 215 Fabre Jan, 19, 89, 94, 113, 122, 129, 142-6, 161, 259-61, 272 De Macht der Theaterlijke D waasheden (The Power of Theatrical Madness), 89, 129, 161, 259-60 Het is theater zoals te verwachten en te voorzien was (It is the kind of theatre one could expect and foresee), 94, 129, 143, 161, 261 Figgis Mike, 73-5, 89, 127-8, 156, 160, 175, 248, See also The People Show Internal Affairs, 156 Leaving Las Vegas, 74, 156 Redheugh, 73-4, 89, 248 Slow Fade, 75 Timecode, 74, 156 Foreman Richard, 103, 154 Café Amerique, 103 Freehold Company, The, 18, 44, 72, 89

Gale David, 154, See also Lumière & Son Gay Sweatshop, 89 Glass Philip, 152, 243 Gray Spalding, 83-7, 103, 120, 240, 244-5, See also The Performance Group Grotowski Jerzy, 18, 24, 40, 72, 157 Grupo Tse, 158, 195-6, 224 The History of Theatre, 161, 195, 285 Halász Peter, 19, 172, 232, 298-9, 304 See also Elephant Theatre; Love Theatre; Squat Theatre She Who Once Was the HelmetMaker’s Beautiful Wife Halau o Kekuhi, 87, 164 Harding Noel Enclosure for a conventional habit, 159 Hare David Wetherby, 163 Het Werkteater, 76, 183, 207, 211, 246 The Party for Nico, 211 Hobijn Eric, 164, 174, 184, See also Ritsaert ten Cate, The Offering: a meditation Delusions of Self Immolation, 164 Impact Theatre Cooperative, 89, 156 The Carrier Frequency, 89, 156 Jasinski Kryzystof, 214, See also stu, Exodus Jesurun John, 32, 44, 163, 183, 286-7, 293 Shatterhand Massacre-Riderless Horse, 286-7 White Water, 287, 293 Joint Stock The Speakers, 42, 89 Jordan Chris, 120-1, 162, 206-7, 227, 229, 236 Kantor Tadeusz, 89, 157, 173 Dead Class, 89 Kobland Ken Death of St Antony, 163, See also The Wooster Group Korot Beryl Dachau 1974, 163 La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 18, 64, 70, 89-90, 102, 106,

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166, 170, 173, 191-3, 222, 283-5, See also Ellen Stewart Arden of Faversham, 191, 222 Clinque, 191 Medea, 64, 283-4 Rat’s Mass, 191-2, 222 Tom Paine (Part i), 18, 102 Ubu, 191-2, 222 La Maschera, 76, 214, 239-40, See also Mémé Perlini Othello, 76, 214, 239 Spring Awakening, 239, 240 Tarzan, 76 The Birds, 240 The Ride Across Lake Constance, 240 Lamers Jan Loris, 105-7, 263, See also Maatschappij Discordia Lauwers Jan, 19, 52, 89, 94, 128-9, 142, 144-7, 156, 185, 271-3, 296-7, See also Needcompany; Epigonen Theatre LeCompte Elizabeth (Liz), 19, 83, 85-9, 163, 244, 252-4, 267-9, 275, 306, See also The Wooster Group Leigh Roderic, 156, 227-9, See also Theatre X Living Theatre, The, 191, 237, 241 London Theatre Group, The, The Trial, 71 Los Angeles Poverty Department. See John Malpede Love Theatre, 19, 153, 172, 298 See also Peter Halász, She Who Once Was the Helmet-Maker’s Beautiful Wife Low Moan Spectacular, 72, 89 Lumière & Son, 154, See also David Gale Lyubimov Yuri, 156, See also Taganka Theatre

Marijnen Franz, 172, 203-4, 237, See also Camera Obscura, Measure for Measure McGrath John, 154, 224, See also 7:84 Theatre Company Lay Off, 154, 224 McLucas Cliff, 149, See also Brith Gof, Gododdin Mickery Productions Camera Obscura, 90 Fairground, 44-8, 54-7, 88-9, 1001, 121, 140, 162, 170, 208-9, 224, 231, 235, 295 Fairground’84, 44, 89, 120-1, 162 Folter Follies, 50-1, 229-1, 235, 247, 270 History of Theatre (Part II), 20, 158-9, 162 Horizon/Canto, 178 If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them, 17, 69, 87, 105, 153, 165 Kidnap, 119, 128, 132, 151, 271, See also Needcompany, Need to Know Outside, 49, 101 Pandora, 39-40 Rembrandt and Hitler or Me, 19, 35, 64, 75, 78, 89, 109, 112, 124-7, 130, 147, 151, 156, 160, 167, 189, 261-2, 270, 285 Sweet Dreams, 42, 139 Touch Time, 15, 75, 100 Vespers, 19, 113, 115, 120-2, 134, 152, 270 Vox Populi, Vox Dei, the reconstruction of a canonization, 234-5 Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 68, 106-7 Moving Being, 40, 72, 89

Maatschappij Discordia, 21, 105-8, See also Jan Loris Lamers; Der Schein Trügt, 106 Mabou Mines, 19, 32, 89, 101-3, 241-3, See also Lee Breuer; JoAnne Akalaitis A Prelude to Death in Venice, 101, 241-2 Dressed Like an Egg, 101 Shaggy Dog Animation, 101, 242-3 The B. Beaver Animation, 242 The Red Horse Animation, 242 The Saint and the Football Player, 103 Malpede John, 164

Needcompany, 18, 19, 32, 44, 52, 89, 90, 128, 129-30, 142, 144-6, 163, 271, 296, See also Jan Lawers; EpigonenTheatre Antonius and Cleopatra, 130, 146, 297 Ça Va, 163 Hess Is Dead, 32, 291-2 Julius Caesar, 32, 145, 296-8 Need to Know, 52, 89, 129, 271-2, O Brave New World programme Galgenmaal (Last Meal), 163 Mr Dead and Mrs Free (by Squat Theatre), 163

Wedding Film Festival (by Edmondo Zanolini), 163 Open Theatre, The, 168, 191 Pekarna Theater, 215 Tako tako, 215 People Show The, 18, 44, 71-4, 89, 209, 249, See also Mike Figgis Performance Group, The, 19, 77-9, 83-92, 142, 240-4 Point Judith, 79, 80, 91, 142, 244-6 The Beard, 79 Three Places in Rhode Island – Nayatt School, Rumstick Road, Sackonett Point, 77-87, 92-3, 244-5 Perlini Mémé, 76, 214, 239-41, See also La Maschera Ping Chong, 19, 32, 294-5 Deshima, 294-5 Pip Simmons Theatre Group, 18, 43, 72-3, 92, 95, 117, 227, 285 See also Children of the Night Alice in Wonderland, 207 Do It!, 18, 64-72, 174, 207, 224, 285 Superman, 18, 43-4, 72, 90 The Ballista, 73, 116-19, 164, 270 The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, 227-8 The George Jackson Black and White Minstrel Show, 18, 64, 92, 196-7 The Masque of the Red Death, 19, 67, 73, 94-7, 189, 236-7 The Pardonner’s Tale, 90 The Pit and the Pendulum, 236 The Raven, 236 Towards a Nuclear Future, 67, 95-6, 120 Woyzeck, 73-4, 173 Portable Theatre, 40, 71 rat Theatre, 24-5, 36-8, 53, 76, 88-90 Blindfold, 24-5, 36-7 Hunchback, 37 Rijnders Gerardjan, 94, 106, 202-3, 275, 303-5, See also Theaterschool, The Ignorant and the Insane Count Your Blessings, 303 Hamlet, 250-1, 262, 275 Hun Blues, 303 Wolfson, de talentstudent (Wolfson, student of languages), 94

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Sack Leeny, 120, 163 The Survivor and the Translator, 163 Schneider John, 50, 103, 114, 246-8, 261, See also Theatre X School of Dramatic Arts, 122, See also Anatoli Vasiliev Cerceau, 122, 156, 276-83 Schumann Peter, 151, 289-90 Schwartz Gary, 17, 21, 72-7, 112 Rembrandt His Life, His Paintings, 112 Ritsaert ten Cate now, 21, 74, 77 Science Research Laboratories A Plan for Social Improvement, 153 Seago Howie, 135, 273, 275-6, See also Peter Sellars, Ajax Sellars Peter, 19, 20, 53, 104-5, 108, 116, 134-5, 163-4, 181, 189, 273-6 Ajax, 20, 53, 104, 134-6, 189, 273-6 Dr. Ramirez, 163 Troilus and Cressida, 275 Sherman Stuart, 15, 19, 78, 104, 120, 160, 163, 183, 238, 250 Hamlet, a Portrait, 151, 163, 250-2 Language, 252 Number 10 Portraits of Places, 238, 252 Suitcase Performances, 163 The Erotic, 252 Simmons Pip, 18-9, 41-4, 64-7, 71-4, 89-96, 106, 117, 120-2, 156, 170-3, 189, 196-7, 206-7, 210-11, 218, 224, 228-9, 236-7, 240, 285, See also Pip Simmons Theatre Group Das Erste Baader einhof Stück, 170 Simone Nina, 17, 35, 69, 102, 110, 133, 165 Skipitares Theodora, 19, 163 Micropolis, 163 Slavkin Viktor, 276, 277-81, See also School of Dramatic Arts, Cerceau Societa Raffaello Sanzio, 163 Speight Johnny, 17, 69, 165, See also Mickery Productions, If There Weren’t Any Blacks You’d Have to Invent Them Squat Theatre, 19, 44, 101, 155-7, 163, 172, 232-3 Cool King Kong, 101 Eldorado, 163 L’ Train, 155, 163 Pig, Child, Fire!, 232-3 Stafford-Clark Max. See Traverse Theatre

Station House Opera, 153, 164 Black Works, 164 Cuckoo, 153 Stewart Ellen, 89, 102, 174, 284 Stichting Incidenteel Theater Experiment/Stichting Mickery Workshop The Dwarfs, 17 De Meiden (The Maids), 17, 223, 292 stu, 64, 76, 169, 214 Exodus, 76, 214 Szendro Ivan, 303-4 The Judge of Blood, 304 Taganka Theatre, 156, 276, 282, See also Yuri Lyubimov Teatr 77, 76, 214 Retrospective, 76, 214 Templeton Fiona, 32, 296 You the City, 296 Ten Cate Ritsaert, 114, 167, 183, 186, 308-9 Honesty Stolen from the Experience of a Lifetime, 182 Pax & Peace, and etc, 181 Peace? Been there, done that 1, 2, 181 Remain seated where you are and don’t disturb yourself?, 225 Staged Realities, 182 The Offering: a meditation, 173, 174, 176 see also Eric Hobijn Ten Holt Simeon, 110, 178 Canto Ostinato, 110 Tenjo Sajiki, 19, 35, 43, 89-90, 94, 98- 100, 114, 170, 198, 209, 219-24, 237, 285, See also Shuji Terayama Ahen-Senso, 89, 99, 198, 200, 220, 285 Bandage, 219 Cloud Cuckooland, a visit/Nuhikun, 35, 43-4, 92, 94, 100-1, 114, 188 Ekibyo Ryukoki (A Journal of the Plague Year), 99, 219 Mojin Shokan, 99 Pastoral Hide and Seek, 220, 221 Salomon. The Human Airplane, 90, 170, 220 The Crime of Dr. Caligari, 220 Terayama Shuji, 19, 43, 89, 95, 98102, 173, 198, 200, 219-24, See also Tenjo Sajiki Test Dept, 147 Theaterschool, 202 The Ignorant and the Insane, 202

Theatre X, 19, 50-1, 89, 103, 113-14, 120, 156, 246-8, See also Roderic Leigh; John Schneider An Interest in Strangers, 50 Dreambelly, 248 I used to like this place before they started making all those renovations, 246-7 Scenarios for the Living/for the Dead, 51, 114 The Calamity Ruth Foose Show, 248 The Unnamed, 19, 50 Thek Paul, 65, 133 Toneelgroep Amsterdam Anne Frank - The Exhibition, 303-5 Touch tv Time, 163 Traverse Theatre, 17, 44, 71, 120, 161-2, 193, 285 26 Efforts at Pornography, 161 Cover Story, 161 Natural Causes, 161 Our Sunday Times, 193-4 Rooted and Grounded, 17 The Gymnasium, 161 Trio, 161 Vasiliev Anatoli, 122, 156, 276-7, 280-3, See also the School of Dramatic Arts Adult Daughter of a Young Man, 278 Vawter Ron, 81, 83, 244-5, 252, 267, 306-7 For the Good Times, 81 Welfare State, 168 Wilson Robert, 102, 106, 170, 241, 244, 261, 275 Deafman Glance, 102, 106, 170 Wooster Group, The, 18-9, 21, 32, 42, 50, 79, 81-3, 89, 93-4, 103, 106, 120, 128, 142-3, 161-4, 252-4, 267-75, 280, 303-7 Brace Up!, 82, 164, 303, 306-8 Fish Story, 82 Frank Dell’s The Temptation Of St. Antony, 82 Hula, 81 North Atlantic, 82, 94 Route 1 & 9, 79-1, 103, 244, 252-4 The Emperor Jones, 82 The Road to Immortality (Part Two) / L.S.D. (…Just the High Points), 80-2, 89, 128, 161, 267-9, 280 Zadek Peter, 76, 171, 213, 240 King Lear, 76, 213

Copyright © 2011. Amsterdam University Press. All rights reserved.

This is the first full-length monograph on the history and working practices of the Mickery Theater, Amsterdam. Between 1965 and 1991 under its noted director Ritsaert ten Cate, Mickery became renowned worldwide for promoting and presenting significant international alternative theatre companies including La Mama, Tenjo Sajiki and the Wooster Group, and for staging its own innovative productions. Through its novel approach, combining archival research, oral history, field observation, testimony derived from interviews with key participants and a description of both documents and physical objects, the book attempts to evoke the unique atmosphere of both the building and the activities it nurtured. It remembers and highlights early manifestations of devised performance, physical theatre and multi-media work often under-regarded in the history of theatre. It also includes a selection of the important reviews of Jac Heijer and Loek Zonneveld translated into English for the first time, to illuminate the manifold excitements and confusions of theatre-going in a period of exceptional artistic burgeoning. Mike Pearson is Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University. He was a member of rat Theatre (1972-73) and an artistic director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (1973-80) and Brith Gof (1981-97). He continues to make performance as a solo artist and in ­collaboration with artist/designer Mike Brookes as Pearson/Brookes (1997-present).

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A superbly realised biography of a Theatre. The full life of Mickery emerges through a rich assemblage of people and events. edward scheer, university of new south wales The Mickery represented a moment of efflorescence and freedom in the history of theater, a free-floating party where high spirits reflected deep commitments – political and social but also personal, intimate, metaphysical and ecstatic. It is refreshing to revisit an era of idealism charged with imagination and wildness, and exchange based on radical equality. peter sellars The Mickery Theatre ‘meant so much to so many’. So will Mike Pearson’s book. An invaluable and beautiful meditation on a project that re-imagined the possibilities for theatre at the end of the twentieth century. joe kelleher, roehampton university, london isbn 978-90-896-4311-7

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