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COME ABOARD
Shifting Points of View in Theatre
Maya van den Heuvel-Arad
link to text in Dutch (on Spring Dance Festival Website)
When Sanja Mitrović is peeling cucumbers and chopping garlic inside the kitchen of the glass house, we are watching her from outside. We might be looking at her kitchen routine, through these glass walls, as if looking at a fish swimming in circles in an aquarium. It might be boring but it's also hypnotizing. One thing is clear: she is in there and we are not. This is her world and we are outsiders.
In film, the spectator is doomed to be distant from the shipwreck. No matter what kind of new technologies are invented, the screen separating the spectator from the world on the other side is always there. They are there, and we are here. But unlike the theatrical fourth wall, film does not limit the point of view of the spectator to an external, supposedly objective, point of view. Subjective shots such as the ‘Over the Shoulder’ shot (taken over the shoulder of a character, along the character's gaze) and ‘Point of View’ shots (taken from the point of view of a character) are integral to the cinematic grammar.
In film, the camera ‘on the deck’ of the shipwreck can provide the spectator not only with an external point of view of the events but also with the points of view of the people on board, as they look at each other and at their ship as it is sinking. With the absence of a camera, theatre cannot show images through the eyes of characters, simply because we cannot look through the body of another. And if that is so, why should we settle for standing on the shore and watching the shipwreck from a distance – when we can lay comfortably on the couch watching it while munching on a bag of chips?
The power of theatre lies in its essence as a live event, where the spectators and the performers share a space at a certain time. It is interesting to observe how theatre-makers use this power to create shifts in point of view which deny the ‘objective’ external point of view. How do they add to their performances the level in which people look at each other and at things, emancipating the spectator from the external passive mode of looking at the distant shipwreck?
Who’s looking?
In DayDream House (2011) by architect Laurent Liefooghe and theater-maker and performer Sanja Mitrović the spectator's point of view shifts from an internal to an external one constantly.
DayDream House is an installation-performance, bringing the two disciplines together, creating a new hybrid form. Liefooghe's installation, also presented independently under the title Woonmachine, is a glass house containing all the necessary utilities including electricity and running water so that one could actually live there. With the use of sound and light, the house is a character in the world of the performance, as much as Mitrović is. The result of this inter-medial experiment is quite an achievement because it is a risky attempt to begin with. If the performance would only take place inside the installation and we spectators would be watching Mitrović from outside, the glass house would become mere décor in the service of the performance. Mitrović would turn into the object of our gaze, looked at by the spectators who are standing on solid ground outside the house.
But that is not the case. DayDream House plays with the relationship between the house, the performer and the spectators. The three are interchanging in terms of ‘who looks at who’, like three juggling balls. Sometimes Mitrović looks at the house, sometimes we look at a dialogue between Mitrović and the house, and sometimes we become a part of the theatrical image itself, being looked at by the other spectators.
At first Mitrović presents herself as the hostess of the house. If she is the hostess we are turned immediately into guests. Mitrović serves us wine and chit chats a little before stepping into the house, supposedly to make last preparations. When she is outside the house, interacting with the audience directly, the audience becomes a part of the image. Our point of view of the image is subjective as we are players in the same world she is in. While serving soup, she suddenly shakes the hand of a spectator, saying: ‘Nice to meet you, I'm Ellen Smith.’ And in a sudden swift – she turns into a character. When Ellen Smith steps into the house we become outside spectators again, external to her world. We are comfortably invisible again.
Goodbye, Dear House
Modes of spectatorship are constantly changing in this work, by the switch in points of view. It is not Mitrović who is hopping from the shipwreck to safe solid ground, but we spectators are. As Ellen Smith, Mitrović goes into the house and takes all the furniture out on her own, while telling the documentary story of an American woman who lost her house in the mortgage crisis. Knowing that Mitrović is playing a character we don't dare to help her, although just a few minutes before that some people dared to help her bring soup bowls, step into her kitchen and stand in line for her soup. If it's your shipwreck it's one thing. But nobody will ever jump onto somebody else's shipwreck voluntarily; the basics of human nature.
‘Do you know the story of Chekhov's mother?’ Mitrović asks while serving the vegetables which she was preparing in the kitchen in the first scene. It is a typical question for a party hostess, trying to ignite a conversation. These sudden shifts between hosting, storytelling and action create an ambiguous mode of spectating, where we are not sure whether we are being looked at or looking at. This hosting mode encourages discussion. Some people reply that they don't know this story and Mitrović tells us, while sipping wine, how Chekhov's mother was cheated by crooks she hired to build a small house. Hearing that story while drinking and chewing, having Mitrović so close by, it might sound like the story of the next door neighbour who we all know. ‘This story,’ Mitrović concludes, ‘was the inspiration for Chekhov's play The Cherry Orchard’, and before we know it, she is a character again, standing behind a microphone, saying to the house: ‘Goodbye, dear house. Goodbye.’ Once again, without physically changing our position, we turn from insiders to outsiders. Earlier it was the house routine shipwreck that we were spectating and now it is the loss of a house, saying goodbye to it.
The Shipwreck with Spectator metaphor is defined by philosopher Hans Blumenberg as a metaphor which
illuminates the essence of human existence. DayDream House is dealing with an existential issue, namely the gain and loss of a house. The timing of this performance is not coincidental. It corresponds directly with the recent mortgage crisis. People lost their homes and if we were lucky, we were on the spectator's side; standing on solid ground, spectating those who lost their homes from the distant. But even if on the lucky side, the notion that the border between spectating and being spectated can be easily crossed is floating above people's heads like a black cloud. It can happen to you as well. DayDream House is using the constant shift in point of view to stress this fluidity. One moment you are spectating and in the next you are spectated. One time you're on a shipwreck and other times you're watching others as they sink.
Shared Disasters
The most complex version of the Shipwreck with Spectator metaphor is the one of communal, rather than personal, disasters. Think of a nature disaster or a war, where nobody is on solid ground. We are all on shipwrecks, albeit on different ships.
In the last scene of the performance, Mitrović invites ten spectators to step inside the house. Inside, a soft light shines on the faces of the people. Outside the house, the spectators are in complete darkness. Music starts playing inside. The house and the people in it become an image of a party and those outside are invisible in the dark. Mitrovićs's voice is heard through the speakers, speaking two different texts. Quickly enough we realize it is not the same text that is spoken inside and outside. The theatrical space allows for the first time a complex simultaneous web of points of view by the combination of audience division in the space and a text which sketches what you see from your point of view.
Those inside are given the point of view of people in a house party in Belgrade in 1999, when NATO was bombing the city. Apparently there were two kinds of people in Belgrade: those who stayed in their homes and switched the lights off, not to turn into targets, and those who decided to just celebrate the days which might be their last. Staying outside the glass house, we take the position of the first kind. The text we hear describes our thoughts as we are sitting in the dark, looking out the window at the people partying in the only electricity area in Belgrade and we ponder about whether we should join them. The people inside the lit house are listening to music and to Mitrović's voice describing the people who chose to stay in their dark homes as the bombs are flashing in the sky: ‘It looks like fireworks! It's spectacular tonight,’ the voice says.
In real life we do not exist as invisible spectators. In reality there is no such thing as an external point of view. We can try to be objective but we experience the world through our own bodies. We perceive and transmit images, we look and we are looked at, we interpret what we see through the prism of our history and background, from the position we are in. Performances like DayDream House make use of the physical presence of both the performers and the spectators in the theatrical space to create a complex web of points of view. Such performances make us aware that theatre is a very powerful medium with the ultimate potential to illuminate our human existence. Maybe more than any other art.
Maya vd Heuvel - Essay - Come aboard - def EN
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Performance: DayDream House (2011) | concept and direction: Sanja Mitrović and Laurent Liefooghe | text / performance:
Sanja Mitrović | architecture: Laurent Liefooghe | text / dramaturgical advice: Maya van den Heuvel-Arad | light design: Sanja
Mitrović and Laurent Liefooghe | sound design: Evelien van den Broek
STREAMERS
One time you're on a shipwreck and other times you're watching others as they sink
In real life, we look and we are looked at