One of the most talked about international theatre pieces of the decade is finally making its New York debut at the Under the Radar festival. In Germinal (January 6-9), Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort use various elements to build the world from scratch. Goerger and Defoort are known pranksters, inventors, musicians and actors who imbue theatre with endless possibility. We asked them a few questions about Germinal.
You’ve had a pretty successful run with this piece all over the world. What has surprised you the most about the way people in different countries react to it?.
Halory Goerger: When we're done, they try to compress air between their hands, hitting them against each other. They also emit noises simultaneously during the play. They don't steal stuff in the wardrobe even if they easily could. Nobody ever tried to eat part of the set. All in all, great feedback.
Antoine Defoort: Well it's hard to tell if it's related to the actual atmosphere of a particular city or to our energy that particular evening. Except maybe in Vienna, where that was the silent treatment no matter how hard we tried to make them laugh. Or in Montreal for that matter, but the other way around. We desperately tried to look serious and sad but they'd just keep laughing at every move.
Ideally, what would the world look like if it were run by theatre people? What kind of system would we have?
Defoort: By THEATRE PEOPLE? I wouldn't want to live in a world ruled by theatre people. Well that may be unfair because I don't know that much theatre people, but if they're all like us, there would be endless discussion to try to reach a consensus, and then constant change of thoughts afterwards. Mind you, we could get to a very satisfying solution but it'll take a very very long time.
The combination of improvisation and extreme theatricality in Germinal seems to be calling for a theatrical reform which allows for more freedom within certain aesthetic parameters, like a more anarchic Brecht. What iconic theatre figures inspired this project?
Goerger: Germinal is 99% unimprovised. Every hesitation, every err, well, dunno, mmh is actually written. Any additional err means a $1 fine for the perpetrator. The writing process involved a lot of uncertainty, but we ended up with a result that we're sticking to, as much as we can. We're only trying to refine it from show to show. I'm not sure Brecht would condone all of our sometimes very pragmatic choices. You're right in observing that we tend to choose theatrical solutions over purity and coherence but that doesn't make us free, it just makes us comfortable.
The very starting point was to invent an environment where theater would have to be invented again : no iconic figures were involved. Iconic concepts, maybe.
Let’s say you’re fed up with the modern world and move to a desert island. What five plays do you bring with you to start a new civilization?
Defoort: If I had the choice I certainly wouldn't bring plays, rather chessboards, comic books, mp3 files and video games. And about plays, the ones I like most are the ones that need to be seen, not only read, so I’d have to bring the crew, the equipment, to build a theater, and maybe a kind of city around it to provide the audience. Fmpf, I wonder if that’d worth the travel.
Goerger: I'd bring the five plays on my shelf that I still haven't read, and I'm pretty sure I'd die on this stupid desert island before I could find time to finish the second. I don't know of any play that helps building a waste water treatment system or building shelter and hunting. Does To Kill a Mockingbird include any tips on actually killing the bird ? I guess not. Not even a play, anyway.
Can you describe what working with L’Amicale de Production is like? How do projects come together?
Goerger: L’Amicale de production is actually our production house, not our company. It so happens that Antoine and I are deeply involved in its life, but not as artists, as coordinators. As a production structure it is a sturdy tool, yet small and handmade, but it's mostly the administration/production team who's to thank for that. So it's great to work with them. Then, if we're talking about the artists involved, I can only talk about the two of us, as a creative team : I guess it's a reasonable nightmare. We tend to spend a lot of energy working on many projects at the same time, touring, researching and producing. We can be scattered and helpless, or extremely enthusiastic and fast. The last three projects we worked on together involved a lot of anticipation, a lot of re-writing, a long research period including pure experimentation. Both very unproductive/crazy/stubborn, yet rational/healthy/fun.
Something beautiful proved by Germinal is how people from different countries/cultures come together to make art, but when it comes to politics the idea seems impossible. Why do you think that is?
Defoort: Maybe because politics is usually not so much about "working on methods to solve problems together" than "taking care of my political career". Now, it’s always easier to work in this rather isolated frame of ours, within our community of caring post-hippies artists, and to be fair, we also have our share of communication problems, quarrel, insidious manipulations, fits of anger and pride displays. So that’s not even working better.
Goerger: It doesn't seem impossible to me. We wrote constitutions, laws, built empires and it sure took a lot of coming-together at some point. The art and politics I'm interested in can both contain each other as concepts, and none is a of lesser interest. Considering both, you'd have to factor the level of involvement and the complexity of the goal to see why it gets harder in a field than in the other. When artists try to engage in issues reaching the degree of complexity attained in international-scale politics, they often produce shit after an excruciating process during which everybody shouted on the others. The art world is filled with angry people not coming together at all, and the politics world filled with people wearing flowers in their hair chanting their to-do list bare feet in the meeting room (I believe New Zealand hosts this, and I never try to get the facts because I like the idea that somewhere it does exist).
The works of this company lend itself to being broadcast and being more interactive with people who can’t come to the performances. Do you see a future where theatre can be enjoyed by people all over the world at the same time?
Goerger: Actually I have not taken part in those attempts, and I still haven't tried to engage in that kind of experimentation. I still enjoy the simple pleasure of the here and now we share in a venue, and am still eager to dig to see how deep this relationship can go.
Defoort: I guess the very same question was asked around the 15th century, when theatre plays were disseminated all around the world on books. And I guess the answer now is the same as the answer then: of course, that's great that we have new tools to share ideas and works (and I think we should rejoice much more about the fact that these tools are so freakin’ amazing, we should actually do this on a daily basis). Now, of course, the theater experience is one-of-a-kind, and it doesn’t quite fit within an ethernet cable, which is both unfortunate (it would be so much more practical) and fortunate, because it drives us to invent new vehicles to explore the immensity of this new territory.
For tickets to this, and other Under the Radar shows click here.
