Rotazaza By Richard Boon
Audience veterans of the old Stoke Newington Festival may remember
an extraordinary weekend when Abney Park Cemetery was transformed
at night into a wonderland of son-et-lumiere, site-specific installations,
random performance art and magical puppetry. Titled ‘Rotazaza
6 (World Service)’,
the event was curated by performance group Rotazaza, who both perform
and, well, curate events.
In this latter role, in January, Rotazaza hosted ‘A Life
Affirming Joyride Volume 1’ at the Hackney Empire’s
Bullion Rooms – so called because, until the big bullion heist
(now, so fashionable) it housed the Brink Matts gold hoard –
a three-night exhibition of minimalist theatre and performance.
Stripped-down to eschew bulky sets, props and special effects, the
pieces were concise, yet richly expansive.
Highlights included Glen Neath’s self-conscious but amusingly
parodic three-handed take on Beckett (absurd conversations between
aging men waiting outside a shed whose expected occupant was absent)
and an extract from Superheroes – in which an older superdude
with failing cosmic powers attempts to control his erstwhile restless
teen sidekick. This was, however minimal and slapstick (pastiche
of characters wearing underwear over tights, gloves of power from
Marigold), very poignant. Issues of parental-adolescent and possibly
homoerotic conflict between the elder and the younger men became
almost Miltonic. Aging hero (God?): ‘Why go? I built you a
world’‚ Rebel youth (Lucifer?): ‘I don’t
want it’.
Plus the fantastic choice of intermission music: Blurt’s
‘My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People’,
featuring Ted Milton’s guttural caterwauling and avant-funk
sax from way back when (Ted performed, with Sam Britton, on another
evening, an extract from their piece ‘In Kharms Way’,
first produced for the Rotazaza ‘Connexions’ festival,
Paris 2001).
The curators themselves offered another three-hander, ‘Getting
Out of Calais, 3am’, subtitled ‘A makes B wet while
C watches’ – which did just what it said on the tin.
To precisely minimal choreography – synchronised facial tics,
blinks and limb twitches – our characters move around three
points of a triangle, throwing water over one another. And –
how Brechtian – someone came on stage to mop up after them,
to a round of applause.
Having recently completed their own small season in March at the
Bullion with ‘Five In The Morning’ , an exploration
of mechanisms of control, Rotazaza will be back at the Empire in
July as part of the Spice Festival, after an impressive series of
international theatre festival appearances. A world service indeed.
www.rotazaza.co.uk/www.hackneyempire.co.uk
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