50 drawings to murder magic

2014


50 drawings to murder magic
Choreographic piece based on the homonymous work by Antonin Artaud.

Creation of the Taanteatro Nucleus – Training, Research, Creation 2014.
Municipal Dance Promotion Program for São Paulo – 16th edition.

Concept and director: Wolfgang Pannek
Co-director: Alda Maria Abreu
Choreographic supervision: Maura Baiocchi
Score: Wolfgang Pannek, Alda Maria Abreu, Ana Beatriz Almeida
Music: Gustavo Lemos
Scenography: Henrique Lukas, Wolfgang Pannek
Costume design: Ana Beatriz Almeida
Special vacancy: Isa Gouvea.
Graphic project: Hiro Okita

Cast: Ana Beatriz Almeida ; Camila Duarte ; Dora Smék , Elisa Canola , Fabio Pimenta , Henrique Lukas, Janaina Carrer , Juliana Morimoto , Kalassa Lemos Guarani Kaiowá , Lika Rosa , Marcelino Bessa , Marcelo D’Avilla , Michele Carolina, Mônica Cristina , Patrícia Pina Cruz , Paula Alves , Samanta Lwn .

FotosVideo

50 drawings to murder magic is a choreographic creation loosely inspired by the homonymous and posthumous work of the French poet, author and actor Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). Composed of solos, collective dances, a chorus of glossolalia and Artaudian texts, the show takes as a starting point the totems or gris-gris characteristic of the last ten years of his life. These feverish pencil drawings, intentionally punctured and burnt, created a Theater of Cruelty “on small checkered sheets of school paper”.
Records of magical gestures, dances and vocalizations immersed “in the surreal, extra-real, supernatural, suprasensitive” to combat the incessant attempts to invade, occupy and dominate your body through cultural, moral, aesthetic and economic codes, considered by Artaud as the true “black magic”. “Intentionally unsuccessful” these drawings-scriptures, averse to representation, formalized languages ​​and good taste are vestiges of a counter-magic and a poetic-alchemical combat against the institutionalization of the human body.
The magic of institutions and war, witnessed by Artaud as a soldier in the First World War and “deported” to the asylum during World War II, were decisive experiences for his life and art. They contributed to his visceral writing, his warlike tone, his shattered body drawings, his vision of an eroding world, his one-man poetic war against the whole world.
50 drawings to assassinate the magic elect the nefarious magic of wars as the main target. Territorial and ideological conflicts melt into the wars of yesteryear and today: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Central Africa, Sudan, Mexico, etc.
Unprecedented, the staging explores the Artaudian will to “blow up” the organized body and to create a new anatomy capable of “healing and governing life”. It adopts as a dramaturgical dynamic the rite of the Great Work that symbolizes the spiritual transformation through the transmutation of lead into gold. It thus approaches the conception of an alchemical theater outlined by the poet.
It results from the artistic training process of NUTAAN 2014 and initiates cARTAUDografia, a project to create Taanteatro Companhia for 2015.

Review
Artaud to expel demons from the culture, spectacle of the TaanTeatro

Expressive, spasmodic, opiate, crazy. Words that crossed my mind while watching “50 drawings to kill magic” yesterday, a show that is the result of the artistic training process of NUTAAN, a nucleus linked to the TanTeatro company.
Inspired by the posthumous work of Antonin Artaud, the montage corresponds to the sense of transgression that the French dramatist, poet and actor gave to his life and his art. Seventeen actors on stage, in a dance-theater show, support the idea of ​​creating new aesthetic, political, philosophical, poetic codes in place of what the system proposes as a kind of “black magic”, determining attitudes to be combated in an artistic way .
Very impressive the expressions and body drawings of the cast, an actress even makes a kind of decal of the work “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. It was the first time that I saw “O Grito” in the flesh. Just one of the many examples of “masks”, postures and anguishes that mark Artaud’s work so well, incursion through his trauma as a soldier of the First World War and his compulsory internment in asylum during World War II.
The asylum environment is very present in screams, contractions, spasms, pulsations, revolts that reach the peak in the appeal of the “body without organs”, the theme of one of Artaud’s texts. Delusions, glossolalia and disjointed speech are well used in this “poetic fight”. This is a sample of the Teatro da Crueldade, with the actors mixing with the public as Artaud wanted when proposing to overcome these borders.
The space of the Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, with the columns wrapped in papers with drawings and writings by Artaud worked as a backdrop. Dramatic sound corresponds to the tension required for the staging.
I remembered Artaud’s passage, viscerally presenting the concepts of the Theater of Cruelty at Sorbone, in the 1930s, when the writer Anais Nin was the only one to remain in the audience until the end. The rest of the audience stood up without understanding that artist who roared and drooled on the scene.
More than 50 years later, his proposal remains alive, imploding the limits of artistic language through the body-word, body-poetic, body-insane, body-delirium, body-unconventional that shelters and expels the demons of culture.
(Célia Musilli / LETTER CAMPINAS)

Apresentações:
17, 18, 26 e 27/09 – Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade, São Paulo
28/09 – 20h – Centro Cultural São Paulo – Mostra do Fomento à Dança