Having read the synopsis of the theatrical performance "Go" got me enthusiastic about going to the Puppet Museum located in the Convent of Bernardas in Lisbon, where it would be performed ... but if the idea behind the performance sounded really interesting a lot more interesting was the actual performance which I do consider to have been one of the best, if not the best ever, in this genre.
It was all about memories, fragments of life, moments of past brought back to life taking over the solitude of an old lady moving about recklessly in the semi obscurity of her room ... letting them go as they did in her long gone past ... with the emotional strings of attachment they had had back then ... the difference being that now they are brought back to life in the form of memorabilia, music, sounds ... remembrances, whose left pieces and in-existence she tries to wrap around or get rid of with paper tape, the same tape she uses to build up a sequence of scenario settings of the past turned present, be it with human figures ... objects ... objects she needs to let go of that past.
Throughout the performance there were many moments of visible sadness ... loss ... solitude ... but there were also moments of decision-taking taken further away from the inevitability of the sequence of those same events from the past ... the freedom of fluttering one's wings as only birds do ... watching from a window that drew her back in and outwards .... opening a door where once a closed one had stood ...
"Here comes the sun ... " heard at the end of the performance, as she goes though the door may be equated as a healing process regarding the past or a further step into the "liberating" death ... but whichever way we decide to interpret it ... "it's all right" as the song goes ...
This intricate story of lost affections ... reduced to memories can be anyone's story ... or anyone's future story ...
Polina Borisova, who stage designed and performed this mesmerising theatrical piece of Art act is a young Russian born in Siberia whose family dedicated their life to making and teaching puppetry in Jaroslav. After having graduated from the Faculty of stage design and puppetry in the Saint Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy, Polina took part on various projects having later studied at the Ecole Superieure des Arts de la Marionette de Charleville- Mézières.
She is beyond no doubt a master interpreter ... had one not known before hand that the actor on stage was in her thirties we would have easily believed she was the character she performs ... an old lady in her eighties and the fact that it is consistent with the image projected was not solely dependant on the characterisation factor but the mastery of movement Polina achieved ...
But she also mastered the sketching design approach with the paper tape, which played an important role throughout the whole play, in brief ... well controlled movements ... as well as the "bird-like" dance which revealed another aspect of her mastery of body movement ...at its best.
No words will be able to translate what went on stage ... nor what has gone beyond the stage during the performance ... and which will certainly linger on in our minds, as audience ... and passive partakers of this sequence of events, which may already be or have become our own.
An absolute MUST, if ever one has the chance of watching this theatrical piece of "théatre des objects" artistic performance.
It may change one's perspective regarding "theatre performances" ... it may even change one's perspective in terms of life ... and life importance, as it has mine ...
Direction, scene staging and performance:
Polina Borisova
Co-Production:
Odadrek/Cie Pupella Nogués, Centre de Création et de Dévelopement pour les Arts de la Marionette, France
Photography:
Patrick Parédes
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