Mind Out Reviews - Station House Opera

From The Times
November 19, 2008
Mind Out at Battersea Arts
Centre, SW11
Donald Hutera
Station House Opera has been toying with the possibilities of live
performance for nearly three decades. The central conceit of its latest
production, the arch postmodern comedy Mind Out, is that each of the
five cast members undergoes a complete separation of mind and body
onstage. The actions and expressions of thought or feeling of one actor
are under the control of another, whose will is exerted through verbal
instructions. An example: A directs B to sip from a mug of tea, but it is B
who tells C to swallow.
This basic premise acquires an increasingly dotty domino effect as the
show progresses. Roles shift in terms of who has power over whom,
instructions lengthen and passages of cartoon violence ensue. There is
no actual plot or characters, only commands and imposed motivations
that are either met with co-operation or resistance. The result is an
elaborate, 70-minute theatrical game that pushes the notion of
contradictory behaviour and cause-and-effect social manipulation to
sometimes enjoyably ridiculous extremes.
Sprinkled with bouts of unexpected physical comedy, plus a delightful
musical interlude, Mind Out has the good sense not to take itself too
seriously. But, fun though it is, even as it was happening I was
questioning the deeper implications of all the clever-clever confusions
that arise from the gimmick at its core.
The show was devised by its cast, including the director and company
founder Julian Maynard Smith. The subversive streak of po-faced
lunacy lurking inside his tall, gaunt frame is memorably manifested in a
dangerous little dance of the grievous bodily harm that he is itching to
inflict on Tom Bowtell's younger love rival. Zena Birch, Helen Morse
Palmer and Bowtell are able and willing fellow players, but it is the longtime company collaborator Susannah Hart who manages best to be
both a blank slate and completely and utterly in the moment.
Box office: 020-7223 2223, to Nov 29
TIME OUT
Mind Out
* * * *
BAC, Lavender Hill, London, SW11 5TN
Rating:
By Andrew Haydon Posted: Mon Nov 17
A pile of random household objects – a roll of kitchen paper, a
teapot, some spangly string – becomes a complex financial instrument
powered only by market confidence. After a few minutes it is known as
The Dictator. Only moments later it has been dismantled, the five
performers have become embroiled in a massive punch-up and it is
never mentioned again.
The premise is an elaborate theatrical game with one rule – each of the
performers’ minds does not control their own body. Their bodies are
each ‘controlled’ by another performer, who offers instructions – ‘you
pick up the biscuits’, ‘you stir the tea’, ‘you kiss her’, ‘you answer him’,
‘you throw her across the room’, etc.
While initially looking like an overdeveloped improv exercise, you gradually
realise that control passes wordlessly between performers. Everything
has been meticulously crafted and drilled. Scenarios develop. An
innocent attempt to make tea rapidly descends into ice-cream being
flung at walls and a near-fatal fall from a climbing rope.
Just as the piece refuses any discernible narrative or indeed apparent
motivations for suggested actions, it also eschews the normal niceties
of stage-fight etiquette. When the brilliantly guileless Tom Bowtell gets
kicked from his chair, it is all the funnier for being so palpably real and
wrong.
Thanks to the removal of old-fashioned dramatic devices
such as character and story, Station House Opera creates both an
intriguing space within which meaning is created by the audience and a
series of very funny comic routines. This is postdramatic theatre meets
Buster Keaton. Enjoy.
THE GLASGOW HERALD
Friday February 27, 2009
Performance
MIND OUT, TRAMWAY, GLASGOW
MARY BRENNAN
***
Straight off, it just looks like bossy-boots behaviour. Perhaps the nippy blonde is
simple training the shyly grinning bloke in the little courtesies of taking our tickets –
but actually dictating how he should tear the cardboard strips? What he should say to
each ticket-holder? It’s funny, for us. A tad humiliating for him, surely? It all clicks
into place within minutes of this Station House Opera (SHO) performance getting
under way. Not one of the five performers knows their own mind. One of the others
tells them what to do, how to react, what to think. Meanwhile, each cast member is
also ordering – as in “thinking for” somebody else. It sounds more complicated that it
looks, and mostly it looks hilarious. Especially when it takes all five of them to make
a cup of tea and then drink it.
The on-stage props – two stand alone doors, two tables, several chairs and
miscellaneous everyday objects – certainly encourage domestic farce. And for a
while the harum-scarum action is entertainingly ridiculous. But suddenly the jolly
slapstick turns sinister. How easy to say “smash him” – or indeed “kiss him” – when
you are not delivering the smacker to head or lips. The cast adhere superbly to
mindless biddability. And, of course, no-one is responsible for the outcome of their
orders. Even when three musicians arrive with a rootie-toot-toot melody (played with
infectious swing), no-one says anything, so no-one does anything. And finally, when
we are all, literally, in the dark, the mindless obedience continues – complete with
biff-bang-wallop noises off. By then, hopefully, we have begun thinking for
ourselves and realising how inspired, how politically and socially astute this SHO
performance is. A strong start to the New Territories season, which continues tonight
and tomorrow with Companhia Paulo Ribero.
One Piece at a Time
Groupe d'Etudes Interdisciplinaires en Arts Britanniques
Mind Out – Station House Opera.
Imaginé & interprété par Zena Birch, Tom Bowtell, Susannah Hart, Julian Maynard Smith,
Helen Morse Palmer. Direction artistique : Julian Maynard Smith
Lumière : Susannah Hart
Coordination costumes : Susannah Hart
Direction technique : Rachel Shipp
Régie : Matthew Bowyer
Production : Artsadmin Judith Knight & Marine Thévenet
Mind Out est un projet Artsadmin, developpé au BAC et soutenu par le Arts Council England.
Avec le soutien de l’ONDA
“Helen > Tom : You welcome her. You tear her ticket, and invite her to sit down.
You smile at him, take the ticket and thank him. You tear it and give it back and gesture
towards the seating.
You say hello and tear the ticket. You invite him to sit down.
Etc...
[…]
Tom says “Hello”. He tears the ticket. “Please sit anywhere you wish[2].”
Ceci est la toute première scène de Mind Out. Cette scène ne se
déroule pas sur le plateau mais à l‘entrée de la salle de spectacle alors que
les spectateurs affluent. Deux personnages de la pièce accueillent le public.
Tom, souriant, fait office d‘ouvreur mais un ouvreur particulier car à côté de
lui, un peu en retrait, Helen, appuyée contre le mur et l‘air passablement
agacée, marmonne entre ses dents. Helen marmonne ce qui ressemble à des
ordres et Tom exécute ces ordres sans avoir conscience de la présence
d‘Helen. Car Helen n‘est pas véritablement quelqu‘un. C‘est l‘esprit de Tom.
Comme Tom est l‘esprit de Julian qui est lui-même l‘esprit de Zena qui est
l‘esprit de Sue. Puis les esprits changent de corps ou inversement.
Mind out prend, en effet, au pied de la lettre l‘expression “to be out of one‘s
mind” et en fait le principe de fonctionnement général de la pièce. Chacun
contrôle le corps d‘un autre en lui donnant des indications de répliques, de
déplacements, d‘expression et d‘actions simples. Si ce principe de jeu repose
sur un malentendu ou une simplification du rapport entre corps et esprit, il
n‘en est pas moins terriblement efficace comme ressort comique en créant à
volonté décalages et situations absurdes. La trame n‘est pas constituée d‘une
histoire linéaire mais d‘une succession d‘actions ordinaires qui, parce
qu‘accomplies très différemment de l‘ordinaire, font événements.
En effet, toute action, aussi simple soit elle, comme la préparation d‘un thé,
est accomplie collectivement car l‘ordre d‘un des esprits vient sans cesse
interrompre l‘action d‘un corps qui répondait à un ordre antérieur. Outre
l‘introduction d‘un rythme trépidant, cette interdépendance des personnages
du point de vue narratif et des acteurs du point de vue de jeu est sans doute
le point par lequel cette pièce rend profondément joyeux : en effet, la
mécanique parfaite de cette pièce qui repose sur la dissociation entre corps et
esprit induit le fait de placer au premier plan le travail collectif, l‘attention
portée à l‘autre, condition de cette précision d‘orfèvre, disséquée sous nos
yeux à chaque fois que l‘un donne une indication à l‘autre. On jouit de la
maîtrise d‘orfèvre des comédiens qui leur permet de prendre un plaisir évident
à jouer et de le transmettre au spectateur. A nouveau, cette production
participe d‘un détournement des conventions théâtrales pour créer un nouvel
espace de jeu : par le biais du principe de dissociation, est mise en abyme la
direction d‘acteurs ; est dévoilée l‘artificialité et la virtuosité du jeu de l‘acteur
qui peut à loisir avoir l‘air triste ou joyeux sur commande ; est déployée
devant nous le processus même de constructions de situations qui créent du
jeu, qui font théâtre : est rompue toute illusion théâtrale délocalisant le plaisir
du spectateur dans le jeu désigné comme tel.
Mind Out est un astucieux jeu de théâtre, poussé à l’extrême, impliquant les
acteurs, malgré eux, et souvent à leurs dépens, dans une suite de situations
proposées par les autres protagonistes.
C’est cruel et drôle. À tester avec vos (meilleurs) amis. Prenant l’expression « being
out of your mind », au pied de la lettre, Mind Out questionne malicieusement la
dissociation entre le corps et la pensée, les thèmes de glissement et de perte
d’identité, et de manipulation. Les actions sont séparées des gestes, les comédiens
des personnages, chaque acteur se trouve alors divisé en deux, un corps et un
esprit. Alors qu’un acteur donne des instructions à un autre, il répond à celles d’un
troisième en retour, et ainsi de suite — pour cinq joueurs. Menées avec un humour
caustique, parfois cruel, les situations deviennent de plus en plus cocasses, tirant la
pièce vers l’absurde, vers la comédie loufoque. Après plusieurs projets explorant les
nouvelles technologies, Station House Opera, compagnie de renommée mondiale,
offre un spectacle burlesque, conduit par la brillante malice de Julian Maynard Smith,
que ne renierait en rien Buster Keaton.
The Fringe Guru