Magnificent Serbian and Bolivian performers once again prove how valuable the Groningen festival Noorderzon is

He asks if he can kiss her breasts. She agrees. She is seventeen, the old man is her uncle. In How I Learned to Driveof the Serbian company Heartefact, to be seen at International Theater Festival Noorderzon in Groningen, the painful, cross -border relationship between a man and a girl is already sharply drawn in the first scene.

The inconvenience is optimal due to the proximity of the actors, who are sitting on chairs between the audience. The seats form a minimal rectangle, with only a walking path of one meter wide in the middle. The two actors are moving over six open places between the visitors in the front row.

The text, from the American Paula Vogel, from 1997, goes refined and subtly back in time, to show how the initial situation could have arisen. In scenes at the age of sixteen, fifteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, we see how a friendship is created, and how the child takes care of her unfortunate uncle. While he plays her in, placing on a pedestal and sexualizes, always with the words that she never has to do anything she doesn’t want. The threat among those hypocritical words is almost tangible.

A Lolita (after the novel of Nabokov) This piece is called from a female perspective. That is not how it feels for those who earlier this year F*CK Lolita From the southern theater saw, in which the resistance and anger of Lolita was given plenty of space. How I Learned to Drive Is more a balance exercise, with an eye for the child, but also for the maturation of feelings back and forth. What can be conceived as a female perspective is that as an eighteen -year -old she still has an insight and has the last word, other than Lolita. Whether she will be fine is another question.

Despite the language barrier, Svetozar Cvetković and Marta Bogosavljević impress with their dazzling, magnificent game. With small smiles he is the charming monster and with her stream of words and many gestures she is the beautiful, lively, freedom -craving, naive teenager. Thanks to their magnificent game, this ominous, abrasive piece about abuse also becomes moving.

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Beer as a slot

Cross -border behavior is also the core of Ave from the Bolivian Mariana Bredow. Prior to the performance, she asks eight women to accompany her on the theater floor. They get a can of beer for a slot. In her story, Bredow sketches a threatening situation in which she got into La Paz twenty years earlier as a cocaine addict. She is only in the house of a dangerous dealer, and convinced that he wants to drug her.

In mesmerizing language, played with equal parts intensity and pathos, Bredow evokes the fear and uncertainty of a attacked woman. At the peak she calls the rest of the women in the room to the floor. After which she tells in which magical way she managed to save herself, while painting herself with white and black paint, to the militant being she plays. Without being explicitly mentioned Ave Both a celebration of sisterhood and a mirror of male aggression.

The themes in the aforementioned performances are also burning issues in the Netherlands, but it is inspiring to see how glorious makers in countries such as Bolivia and Serbia shape it. That makes Noorderzon a special, valuable festival.

Homage au pairfrom Norwegian De Utvalgte, also takes the patriarchy on the grain. In short films and via VR glasses you see scenes around three couples with an au pair. Every couple seems to have the best with their resident help, but is now condescending and annoying. At the same time, there are intimacy that suggest that more is going on. For example, a man puts his head in the lap of an au pair.

Homage au pair Is sometimes funny, but the social satire and the unwanted behavior are also a bit thick on top. That the actors are present live and play another scene, unfortunately does not add much.

Prodigy

The expectations about Mario Banushi announced by Noorderzon as ‘wonderful’ were high and in his Mami See why European festivals are doing things. The Albanian of 26, who lives in Greece, has a completely own theater feeling, which he imposes uncompromising.

In Mami Is not spoken and the characters move slowly through space. There is hardly any music or sound, so Banushi creates a great stillness. It contrasts with the cycle of the life he shows. Mami Starts with a birth, with pain -screaming young mother and ends with a ritual around a died old woman, also a mother.

There is love, struggle, care and sorrow, portrayed in Tableaux with a minimal dynamic. The downside of his approach is that in the absence of language and detailing the symbolism remains rather generally, and sometimes visits without obligation. What lasts are some picturesque images: a young man who puts an old woman a clean diaper; The young woman who tries to drown herself into a glass bowl of water and look straight into the audience; The old woman who sucked her son, played by an adult man, on which another old woman offers her again.

In dance performance Plagiary the Australian choreographer Alisdair Macindoe transfers the leadership of his work to artificial intelligence. The eleven dancers wear ears and AI whispers in which movements to make. On a screen above the dance floor, the public can read what the instructions are, and therefore assess how the dancers perform it.

It is an interesting experiment, with a somewhat predictable outcome. These are excellent dancers, chosen for their large individual differences, so it is a pleasure to see how they interpret the bizarre assignments. Such as: “loosen your skin” or “whisper with your body.”

Their movement arsenal is large, all the possibilities of limbs and bodies are used, often also group or imitating each other, commissioned. But the whole also looks controlled. Macindu also chose to have ai-texts repeated about dance for dancers. That often results in roasting meaninglessness, which also gets in the way.

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