“META”, a disaster performance

Ιn an abandoned factory – the most important tannery of the Balkans in the 19th century – ODC plays the end of the world five times a week for two months. The spectators are lead across this impressive building, haunted by the memory of its workers, before witnessing how an artistic project is cut short.

META has been created in and for this unique site, over three months of research, improvisation and editing. The atmosphere of the space as well as the political events that are shaking Greece and the European Union deeply impregnate the piece. If some economical questions are tackled, some issues are not left aside such as the loss of meaning and the feeling of belonging to a deceptive world for which everyone is asked to suffer a bit, to pay in one way or another and to think, should we want to save it. Alongside the cast of famous actors, there is a group of extras who stand for, and actually are, their Athenian co-citizens.

In the foyer, two hostesses look after the spectators, smiling and dancing their way among them, first sensually and then epileptically. Standing behind the mic, Elektra Tsakalia disseminates meta-words: metamorphosis, metabolism, meta-language, metaphysics, Metallica! – this litany of metas opens the piece that questions the notion of after: what will come after the destruction, after the crisis and after the end of the world? An alarm rings, the girls are having a fit in the cage where they have just been locked, the audience are rushed outside.

There, on a concrete ramp, comes the time for a speech about phantasmagoria, this fascination for illusions which had an unfathomable success in the late 18th century. It is literally the art of making ghosts speak, therefore the art of making images speak and of moving what remains still. The audience is then lead inside the basement of the building and a big metallic gate shuts behind them. Under a very dim light or revealed by a torch beam, some corpses are lying on the ground and are meticulously watered. Besides, the sound of water drops fills up the space, for the soundscape is omnipresent and structural from the very beginning of the piece. Herded through a dark corridor, the spectators grope their way between two vitrines behind which some dummies are strangely gathered, past a body preserved in a Plexiglas jar and along a pile of bodies slowly peeling off each other and merging again.

The phantasmagoria then becomes embodied in a fascinating set up: lighting, set, choreography, music, voice. In the midst of concrete columns, with water dripping incessantly from the ceiling, dimly lit; in the midst of reflections in concentric circles; their feet in the dark water that we imagine as cold as ice; three women are dancing accompanied by the voice of a fourth woman, standing by the musicians. With their faces concealed, they come forward and momentarily pause, like the doubles of some Tarkovskian characters. Silence replaces the electronic music and violin, only the water can still be heard. Some helicopter blades start roaring, the dance turns into a tremor leading to a violent explosion and many a fall. For a moment the whole world seems to have disappeared. The sound softens up, escalates towards higher notes and drifts towards a lyrical melody. The women mingle, drag each other and drag themselves toward the upper world, on a slow decrescendo.

When the audience leaves the space with the columns, they notice that the gate has been opened and it is their turn to access the upper world. Several tableaux are now going to succeed each other, like the different takes of a fictive shooting which, unlike Truffaut’s The American Night, shows the miseries rather than the splendors of a film crew. Following the instructions of their director – a role that has been taken over at the end of the first month of the run by the actual director, Elli Papakonstantinou – the actors play one scene after another. Each one has distinct references: religious – The Last Supper, the crucifixion and procession; artistic – the fallen statue of Lenin drifting down the Danube on a barge in Theo Angelopoulos’ Ulysses’ Gaze, and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa; topical – the image of a terrorist with his jacket lined up with dynamites; political – a table conference and a demonstration; popular – a Greek cover of Abba’s song Money; symbolical – the chimera creatures that bring the piece to an end. The references are the ghosts of this improbable after.

It is hard to describe everything that penetrates the space. There is some humor, some poetry, some anger, some cynicism and some irony. There are some beautiful visual compositions. There are complete yet subtle performers, whose physical and intellectual engagement with the project is obvious at all times, as Valia Papachristou’s outstanding performance shows. There is a sound score that achieves the double challenge of being simultaneously the skeleton and the skin of META. There are tight bodies with the stamina necessary for a 2 hours’ long performance.

Maybe one can regret that at times the play loses itself in wearisome chatting. Maybe one could wish for a project with clearer lines. However the strength of the piece probably relies on this chaotic basis, which is the mirror of a collective writing always in movement and constitutes a solid support, prompting all not to allow themselves to stagnate within a rigid performance.

When the performers are suddenly left alone to their own devices, without any extras, without any director and without any production, their attempt to come closer to the audience simply sums up the project, that never stops questioning itself according to the events of Greek politics, following the ebb and flow of hope. Entrusting composer Lambros Pigounis with the music which functions as the mental and societal structure of the piece, and French choreographer Pauline Huguet from London with the movement, ODC collective take the risk to inscribe themselves in the here and now, with their always growing and razor-sharp piece.

Note
ODC Ensemble was founded by Elli Papakonstantinou and is constituted of actors, dancers, musicians, video and visual artists coming from Great Britain, Greece, France, Germany and elsewhere. Famous for their work on Homer, ODC Ensemble recently staged Viciousness in the Kitchen after Sylvia Plath’s Three Voices.

Interview with Marie Juliette Verga | Sphenoide | 01.11.2011