2000 Ft / 1500 Ft (Trafó Season Ticket is valid)
In the frame of FUTURSPEKTIV - New Flemish Masters Trafó presents:
PENDULUM swinging into motion theatre series 4’
Length of the programme: 90’
With English and Hungarian subtitles.
With Maria-Magdalena (Mary Magdalene) Wayn Traub completes his Wayn Wash Trilogy. The first part of the trilogy Maria-Dolores, created eight years ago, made a deep impression not only in Flanders but also internationally. The second part Jean-Baptiste was also widely acclaimed.
With Maria-Magdalena (Mary Magdalene) Wayn Traub completes his Wayn Wash Trilogy. The first part of the trilogy Maria-Dolores, created eight years ago, made a deep impression not only in Flanders but also internationally. The second part Jean-Baptiste was also widely acclaimed.
"Cinema-opera": that was the name Wayn gave to his idiosyncratic combination of theatre, video images and music. He put his ideas down on paper in his Manifesto of Animal Theatre and then spent a decade tinkering with this theatrical form. His production of Maria-Magdalena rounded off that period. For two seasons he experimented with new subject matter and forms in productions like Arkiologi and N.Q.Z.C. All this now comes together in the third part of the trilogy which again combines film and theatre. And how! Wayn shot many of the film images in China using no fewer than 57 actors and female dancers and some 40 extras!
Wayn: “Their sense of aesthetics and beauty has a lot to do with my fascination with the East. Classical Chinese dance is a very refined, very feminine way of dancing. It requires life-long dedication. The emphasis is on dancing together and on elegance. I love the simplicity of it and the technical perfection.” Jaan Hellkvist, a musical phenomenon from Norway, wrote the score. Zhibo Zhao, one of China’s leading female dancers, and singer Gabriel Rios play surprise roles in the film.
In Maria-Magdalena Wayn Traub plays his trump cards: his video montage technique, his extraordinary stage presence and his unique voice. As the shaman singer Ioqanan, Wayn Traub stands alone on the stage in a world that is a cross between an installation and a ritual setting. By means of video images, snippets of story and ritual invocations/pop songs, he evokes a contemporary world of aggression, speed, nightlife, seduction, decline, depression, fear and a desire for beauty and coherence. For Wayn the images form a sort of 'iconographical portrait' of Ioqanan and of a society characterized by a 'Judgment Day feel'. Maria-Magdalena is a synthesis of Wayn's fascination with the East and with ritual, kitsch and Catholicism, mystery and eroticism, the archetypal and psychoanalysis. All that is shot through with a contemporary score and a visual language that owes much to MTV, commercials, American serials and the internet. In Maria-Magdalena Wayn Traub creates an idiosyncratic world in which Asian nuns, African department-store rappers, Catholic bishops, an archaeologist in search of lost civilizations, a soldier cum poet, two art critics, a man with a camera hidden in his glasses and the like forge a network of surprising links. Lokanaan becomes the icon of a society which can only renew itself by destroying itself. In a ritualized performance he invokes the primordial mother Mary Magdalene who manifests herself as a destructive yet purifying force.
Wayn: "In Maria-Dolores I concentrated on the figure of the mother and in Jean-Baptiste on the figure of the man. In Maria-Magdalena the seductress Salome takes centre stage. The production is about the power of seduction and sexuality, but also about the power and effect of advertising images. The story of Salome is very important to my trilogy. Underlying it is a sort of triangle. i.e. three characters who return in each part: Herodias (the mother), Herod/John (the man) and Salome (the daughter). For me Mary Magdalene and Salome are one and the same person. In the Wayn Wash Trilogy I examine these three aspects of myself. The trilogy is full of Mary Magdalenes, mother figures and John the Baptists. Salome's dance leads to John's decapitation. I see the beheading, or the castration if you like, as a metaphor for the point our society has reached. The beheading is the end point necessary for a new beginning.”
Wayn Traub regards Maria-Magdalena as the end point of what he calls the first phase of 'the animal theatre'. It is also the start of something new. Wayn Traub is setting up his own music theatre company entitled SERVICE TO OTHERS, in which the ritual theatre he has always dreamt of will find its ultimate form.
About the director:
Wayn Traub is very controversial, both as a character and in terms of his work. While a section of the press and public idolizes him, there are those who malign him. “I am my own reference. And I know in advance that the themes I choose and the way I treat these themes do not make for easy entertainment and so they don’t make me popular. But I am not looking for popularity; that is not what being an artist is about.” However, neither his supporters nor his adversaries can ignore the phenomenal way Wayn Traub creates his productions: he ingeniously assembles script, music, narrative, set and film to produce a polyphonic whole. In his work he is constantly on the lookout for forms of ritual theatre. “Ritual theatre is theatre that has an inner ritual effect. It has nothing to do with outward rituals; rather it has to do with the inner choices you make as a consequence of that theatre, with the effect it has on you. Theatre must be confrontational and bring about a change. Only then is it really important and that’s what I mean by ritual theatre.” His ultimate objective is to inspire people and to reform them; in that respect the theatre-maker is actually a baptizer. “If you make a really good production, your audience goes home ‘baptized’. What they do with that experience is their business.”
Concept, script, direction, play: Wayn TRAUB
Music, producer: Jåån HELLKVIST
Song lyrics: Wayn TRAUB
Additional texts: Jeroen OLYSLAEGERS
With:
Wayn TRAUB, Andy NG, Gabriel RIOS, Lotte VERBEEK, Simonne MOESEN, Omar PORRAS, Mo LI, Wenxing OYANG , Shiyun WANG, Yingyu WANG, Jia WANG, Zhibo ZHAO, Andrian FISHER, Andrew WISE, Patrick BEBI
Camera: Arnout André DE LA PORTE
Production: Toneelhuis
Co-production:
Theatre de la Ville, Paris (FR), Teatro de la Laboral - Ciudad de la Cultura, Gijon (ES), Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), International Theater Festival v/ Kulturhus Arhus (DK), Theaterfestival Boulevard’s Hertogenbosch (NL), Theplanetartdirectors (BE)
"Wayn Traub dedicates this production to his masters Wim De Wilde, Johan Söderberg, Freddy Decreus and Luc Buelens"
Supported by:
