Eveliens PodiumPraat

Gezien: Kolmaskop van Guillem Gefaell Alsina
op 25 juni bij IT’s Festival in Amsterdam

Geschreven voor International Young Makers in Action, www.iyma.eu

Eight sailor robes hanging from the ceiling, a sewing machine on a table surrounded by more robes and one actress: that’s all Guillem Gefaell Alsina and his crew use in the performance Kolmanskop. During the performance, Laura Tamayo Franch shares with us in Spanish, standing behind a microphone, how and when she started to question her own identity, by telling personal and metaphorical stories. Her stories become more beautiful and impressive when she starts to move around. The verbal also becomes physical and visual when she rearranges and plays with the robes as if they represent parts of her identity.

Laura addresses several aspects: personal stories, history in general, conversations with her mother, death and the elements such as water and earth. They all represent fragments of the journey she had to take in the search for her identity. The name Kolmanskop is a reference to a ghost town in Africa that was run over by the desert. A reference that adds more depth to the performance for example about the loneliness you can come across when you question your own identity and how you sometimes must surrender to it. Parts of the text are repetitious and poetic, for example at the point when she tells us how you must let the desert look at you, to help you find your peace and truth in yourself.

There are so many aspects addressed, too many to give each aspect the attention it needs for the performance to have a definite core or for it to become reflective. On the other hand, you could say identities are also complicated and not clear. Altogether Alsina and his crew show us that by combining the different elements of theatre, he can ‘tell’ more than a story and ‘show’ more than a picture, what makes Kolmanskop a textual and visual attractive performance.

Geschreven voor International Young Makers in Action, www.iyma.eu

Dawn P. Robinson was born and raised in Germany, but she has British parents and lived in the U.K. for the last two years. In her master graduation piece ‘When I think of you I think of … Dentist’, she tries to become a proper British person by completing a few typical British challenges. After the second performance during ITS festival, I asked her about the idea behind the piece, her motivation as a theatre maker and her future plans.

When did you decide that you wanted to make theatre yourself?
When I studied acting in Austria, we went to this theatre festival in Croatia. There were some groups from the U.K. as well, and their pieces seem much more personal and not so much trying to be in a character: rather being themselves. I thought that was really interesting. I didn’t enjoy being an character so much in acting school, I always had the impression that I could either make it right or not. I don’t think art should be about making something right. So I decided to do a masters in the U.K. to see how they work and how they approach theatre.

Is this a biographical performance?
Yes: when I was in Germany, I was ‘the British girl’, and in the U.K. I’m ‘the German’. That’s annoying! It’s a biographical motivation. It’s not that I want to be a specific nation, but I wanted to make fun of it a little bit. I also put some clowning into it, because that’s what I really enjoyed.

How did you choose the challenges?
I made a questionnaire before I stared to create this show and I send it out to British people and non-British people, with questions about typical British things. From the answers I created the show, that was my inspiration. And I add things I found really shocking when I moved there, like how they dress when they go out. That’s crazy!

The first few challenges are cliché, traditional, British things. But at the last challenge, Brexit (the U.K. wanting to leave the European Union) comes up: a current issue. Why did you use this?
When I created the show, it was already decided that there was going to be a referendum. I think it’s important to address current issues in art. That’s why I want to do theatre. I also wanted to show a serious side of it.

What are your plans for the future?
I want to be more integrated in theatre. I want to do a training in theatre education so I can work with children and refugees, because I think it’s great that they can learn to be together and work together. Theatre is about coming together.