Why Are We All So Abandoned?
This composite performance brings a glimpse of two seemingly disparate peripheries of human solitude, in both cases working with a space that the performers themselves transform into and add to its aura through their appearance.
A probe into a primordial day in the life of one woman of millions, whose apartment walls form the boundaries of her personal micro-world so that, in complete solitude, she can dream her dreams of mutuality or of a life where she is not just an object. The image of the woman by the JAMU Physical Theatre Atelier conveys the sometimes smiling, but more often bitter circumstances of a woman’s existence in a half-empty world, in which her company is furniture and the only thing she really touches is the dough prepared for a never-baked cake. In moments of absolute isolation and solitude, even the mundane sound of a microwave turns into a battle alarm of immense proportions. The plates hanging on the wall opposite the audience are soon lighted in order to transform their initially cozy effect into something dangerously frightening, as if they were eyes watching a woman under house arrest. But what else is left for a lonely human being but a world of fantasies and her own ideas of someone's proximity in this space of a few square meters called home? Then, too, dough can be a great romantic partner, as well as a mask and a warrior’s shield protecting a woman from the realities of the mundane.
The second part of the production takes place in a much more scenographically or aesthetically cooler place than its predecessor. Origin of Clouds or What It Means to Believe in Something welcomes the audience into an empty space with almost post-apocalyptic realities. Is it possible to truly specify where the clouds of our interiority come from, and why it is so central to all of us to believe in something? A quartet of performers wrestle with their bodies, which shatter under the weight of thoughts of something astral. Though none of the performers ever remain completely alone on stage, it is as if they are oblivious to their mutuality, and their being grouped only makes them more isolated in their pilgrimage. In many moments, the physicality of the foursome is strikingly reminiscent of the ancient Sisyphus wrestling with his fate; their endeavor is equally unrequited in this instance, and the stone is replaced by the skeleton of a cube whose steely, cold appearance only reinforces the fact of human loneliness on the journey of faith.
Although the two performances have seemingly different aesthetics or messages at first glance, they both deal with loneliness, whether orphanhood in society or within the confines of one’s own home, a partnership in our desires. Why are we all so abandoned?
