Guest Blogger JP Tells of Russia’s DEREVO
After working as a stage manager for independent theatre in Toronto for almost a decade, I was lucky enough, in the summer of 2006, to be working at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a show from Volcano. We were performing at the Traverse theatre for the last two weeks of August – one of my favourite theatres to work in.
I’d been to Edinburgh with the same company back in 2002, when I had the chance to see a show from a Russian physical theatre company, Derevo. That show was called La Divina Commedia, took place in a circus tent in an industrial part of the city and was at the time – and still to this day – an example of some of the finest, most dreamlike and Boschian performance work I’ve experienced.
That’s Right: Boschian.
Theatre in the round, four blocks of audience with a tower between each block. A tightrope at least twenty feet up across the stage. A woman, naked from the waist up, immaculately muscled, pale and dusted white wearing faun legs and curling ram horns summoning the three other performers as rabid dog animals only just prevented from attacking the audience. I looked closely at one of those dog-people and for a moment saw nothing at all that was human there.
The show in 2006 was entitled Ketzal and took place at what is well known as one of the most exciting and innovative performance venues at the Fringe, Aurora Nova. This year it’s unfortunately not a part of the festival which even though I’m not going to be able to be there upsets me tremendously. Ketzal, however, was a fitting way for me to end my relationship with the venue.
Again, the imagery is amazingly dreamlike, severely disturbing and unlike anything you’ll have seen on this side of the ocean. They have a complete mastery of environmental design – as soon as you enter the theatre you are, without a doubt, somewhere else. Mark Monahan from telegraph.co.uk reviewed Ketzal in 2006 and said, “Quite simply, Ketzal, the company’s latest show (named after the Naguan for “bird”), is one of the strangest, darkest, most mesmerisingly beautiful things you may ever see.” Frankly, I couldn’t agree with him more. If you EVER get the chance to experience a performance by Derevo, do not pass it up. You can also see their video and still image work at their e-life site.
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