Double bill at Arthaus: music from the Ensemble and an "anti-play"

This weekend, the Arthaus Ensemble returns to the work of Italian composer Fausto Romitelli (1963–2004), this time with Amok Koma , an album created in 2001. Its discontinuous and disconcerting sound conception allows for a sensorial experience that creates imaginative, almost cinematic spaces and dimensions. The instrumental use generates situations that disturb the body and the ability to hear. The fury is linked to the tonalities of electronic music and to the possibility of bringing the body to a hypnotic state, like another form of modern ritual.

Known for his piece Professor Bad Trip, his work has the effect of a substance that succumbs to distortion, either surprising us or opening up the possibility of discussing the notions of music. Each sound seems to feed on itself, pushing exasperation and understanding that from imbalance and fury can also emerge a music that leads us to associations, vibrant emotions, and not just to partying.

*The Arthaus Ensemble presents A Day of Fury, this Saturday at 8 p.m. and this Sunday at 6:30 p.m., at Arthaus, Bartolomé Mitre 434.

There is no set or costumes. They appear on stage naked, escorted by a series of objects that they begin to offer to the audience without any exchange, only the quick expression of interest in a toaster, a teddy bear, or a photo of Pope Francis. In the following scene, almost as a prerequisite for the performance to take place, Laura Kalauz and Martin Schick ask the audience for clothes to wear. They are willing to pay to rent the outfits for the duration of the experience.

The exchange of goods is the first theme of Cmmn sns prjct, a performance that seeks to demolish any idea or possibility of a theatrical work, especially because the two performers tirelessly highlight the conditions under which this situation develops.

Laura Kalauz and Martin Schick establish a permanent dialogue with the audience, even when they briefly represent a scene from a play or a Russian novel (which we will not reveal here) with the hope that someone in the audience will guess its origin and obtain the numbers for a future drawing.

In Cmmn sns prjct, every instance demonstrates that social relations are permeated by commodities, as Marx said, that capitalism forces us to turn everything we do into a salable object. In fact, this very anti-play will be offered at auction so that any spectator can purchase the rights (those interested are advised to bring cash).

The production conditions shape the dramaturgy of Cmmn sns prjct . There is no story or plot here, but rather the very materiality of theatrical action, exposed without any artifice. Representation is replaced or challenged by a form more closely tied to presentation, where nothing about the stage refers to fiction. The actors do not play a character, but they are forced to act, at least the kind of acting that is essential to capturing the audience's attention and convincing them to continue the experience.

We could say that Cmmn sns prjct rehearses a type of political performance that seeks to establish a more social than fictional relationship with the audience. Everything that could be interpreted as part of a show or a game takes on an all-too-real dimension: there are people offering a pair of pants or a T-shirt to the actors, others receiving gifts, and someone willing to put up money to buy the play. But this encounter will also generate a sum of money, and part of the plot will seek to jointly resolve what to do with that small sum.

Every event deserves reflection; it encourages the exercise of looking at how things happen, what lies behind habitual behaviors. That's why we're not faced with a narrative based on an invention, but rather with the most banal reality transformed into the support of an everyday drama of which we are a part, of which we are also authors.

Cmmn sns prjct addresses the instrumentality of politics and allows us to consider the notion of community in theater from concrete experience. It's no coincidence that this work is part of the Paraíso Performing Arts Club's programming, where working with audiences is a cornerstone of the club's curatorship and structure.

The politics in the work are not in the statements, but in the mechanics that make possible the exchange and the resolutions of life in common, without failing to point out that every theatrical device requires money, resources that are managed with greater or lesser success and a capacity to involve others and to generate attention (in this case dramatic) on what we are willing to give, on how we measure our interests, on how we evaluate the parity between what we obtain and what we offered, because the mechanism of Cmmn sns prjct demonstrates that what happens on stage always depends on the response of the audience.

This is where theatricality is recovered, because if the performers fail to stimulate the audience to be in tune with what is happening, the play cannot be realized. The fragility of theater is transformed into a performance that demonstrates how every small intervention makes broader social life possible.

* Cmmn sns prjct presents on Saturdays at 8 p.m., at Arthaus, Bartolomé Miter 434.