#fundament: humanity (lost and found)
BarboraForkovičová / SK
On the fourth day of Divadelná Nitra festival we saw two performances: War's unwomanly face from Slovak chamber theatre and One gesture from Polish NowyTeatr.
The first production focuses on the sad history of Second World War – one of the cruellest periods in our past, when the notion of humanity seemed to fail. Director MariánPecko staged the adaptation of Svetlana Alexijevič's book, which emerged from thousands of her conversations with women who took part in the fights of war. On the stage we see seven actresses. Even though every one of them shares with us a piece of her memory from war, her thoughts or experience, they do not represent specific persons. Every actress is just a medium through which the audience get to know the information, experience and – quite importantly – feelings. Unusual is the connection between life on battlefield and love. “In war, only love was private. Everything else was public.”Even though very cautiously, women confide us the relationships with other soldiers and officers. This is the only sphere of their lives where the feelings could not be “killed” and talking about it, the actresses show more emotions then in any other part of the performance. However, these are not stories with happy endings, as well as the performance is not a comforting one. The question which girls, who just came to war, were wondering about: “Where are those bad people coming from?”is still relevant today. How could this war happen? How could people let it happen?What caused the breaking point when people resigned on the fellowship and stuck with Homo homini lupus? The production inspires us to think about the events prior to the war. It also reminds us to be aware of and sensitive towards our surroundings, as well as our history in order to prevent it from repeating.
On the contrary to the Slovak performance, the Polish one was weaved from finematerial – the stories of deaf people – into a piece radiating warm and even joy. Everything on the stage was expressed in sign language, which was articulated aloud by an interpreter (into Polish). And, of course there were subtitles for the audience, both in Slovak and English. It means that four different languages were used to transmit the ideas and thoughts from stage to the audience. Yet, it all worked perfectly. Language, which is often seen as one of the biggest obstacles considering communication between people of different nations, became the linking piece which brought people together. Apart from that, the production is a kind of insider's guide into the community of deaf people. It explains a lot about the signing language itself and suddenly, the hearing audience finds itself “on the other side”. Without translation, we would be totally lost in the signs we see on the stage. This change of positions provokes the usual notion of deaf people being handicapped and makes us rethink their situation.One gesture is an intimate, yet witty and smart performance. By focusing on a community existing inside a bigger community, it demonstratesthat despite different conditions people live in, it is still possible to cooperate. The only thing needed is the will. Will to communicate, listen to each other and to be prepared to overcome boundaries, which are usually not as big as they seem.