New winds on the stage of the 5th International Experimental Theatre Festival

Bringing to this festival are special plays and stage shows in many genres: drama, reformed opera, circus, puppetry... Closing the festival, it is worth noting that the works of domestic art theaters have demonstrated exploration and creativity in script processing and performance forms.

The play Antigone (60 minutes) by Luc Team stage directed by Meritorious Artist Tran Luc made an impressive opening for the International Experimental Theatre Festival. This is an ancient tragedy, by the most famous playwright of the capital of Athens - Sophocles (lived in the 5th century BC). With the desire to introduce to young audiences, director, Meritorious Artist Tran Luc chose a minimalist narrative style with black and white tones, combined with drum and monochord sounds, and the main character's dance movements, creating a nostalgic stage space, both soft and hard but very concise and easy to understand in more than 60 minutes of the play.

“The play Antigone is very suitable for the symbolic and expressive method. The dramatic situations that occur on stage are very strong, the characters' psychology is pushed to the limit in the symbolic and expressive method,” said Meritorious Artist Tran Luc. Therefore, the characters in the play Antigone performed using both spoken language and made the most of body language, “mastering every finger and every eyelid” according to the director's strict criteria.

Excerpt from an experimental stage play.

Meritorious Artist Tran Luc's experiment is to condense the script, integrating elements of traditional theater. With a long original play, many characters and many conflicts, he has made changes and innovations for his character. He also boldly introduced traditional Tuong performances and movements in a few scenes, plus drum music and contemporary dance music to create a play that "has both Vietnamese appearance and modern spirit" as commented by Meritorious Artist Tran Ngoc Tuan - Director of Da Nang Tuong Theater. The spatial convention in Tuong art is often condensed in sentences like "Thon, tho, thi trieu dinh, chau quan/ Nhat nhan than kiem phu, tu, quan, than" (translated as: An inch of land is sometimes the court, sometimes the district, sometimes the communal house yard, sometimes the land of one's own house. An actor sometimes plays the role of a father, the role of a son, sometimes the king, the mandarin). In the play Antigone, the main character, the girl Antigone, had a narrative dance performance. The character's psychology had to be pushed to the limit, not through sentimental crying but through body movements, making the audience feel the strength and heroism.

As for Meritorious Artist Thanh Tu - "the beautiful rose of revolutionary films" has made a spectacular return to the stage with the play "Giac" (60 minutes) participating in this year's International Experimental Theatre Festival, when she alone plays 4 characters. This is a political play, addressing current issues of today: corruption, economy, women going abroad, loneliness of the elderly... The main character monologues but is actually in dialogue with the audience. Although she is 78 years old, she still dreams of building a small experimental stage that can be performed on any stage to bring academic drama and comedy closer to the public.

“For a long time, I have been thinking about a scholarly stage, a cultural stage that my teachers have passed on to me. More than 30 years ago, Mr. Xuan Trinh, Mr. Duong Ngoc Duc, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Nghi, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Quang established this small experimental stage when the audience turned their backs on the stage. I still love acting very much and I am still just Thanh Tu” - Meritorious Artist Thanh Tu expressed. She determined that her play could be successful or not. However, together with artist Dang Huy Quyen (scriptwriter), they found a story without conflict, confrontation, only one person performing and talking about many issues of the time but still attracting the audience.

The experimental elements on stage of each play are different, expressed in the aspects of script, performance art, musical design, and stage organization.

Participating in the International Experimental Theatre Festival, young artists of the Youth Theatre introduced the play Hedda Gable (120 minutes) by the famous Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, with a youthful, modern staging style by Japanese director Tsuyoshi Sugiyama. The play revolves around a love and family story, in which a woman always tries to overcome the barriers and imposed concepts of society, longing for independence and happiness for herself. The stage is designed in a minimalist, circular shape, in the space of Hedda Gable's house. The attraction of the play lies in the actors' performance, especially when they do not use microphones, showing all the voices, emotions and inner strength of each character. This is a work that is quite challenging to the audience because of its layers and layers of meaning and also because the issues it raises are still relevant. According to Meritorious Artist Si Tien (Director of the Youth Theater): "The play Hedda Gabler is staged entirely according to Japanese stage standards, from the stage of selecting actors, to analyzing and perceiving the work, meticulously taking care of each action, dialogue, facial expression, and character emotion, combined with enthusiasm and creativity bearing the personal mark of each artist."

The main character monologues but is actually talking to the audience.

The experimental elements on stage of each play are different, expressed in the aspects of script, performance art, musical design, and stage organization. This also shows the efforts of scriptwriters and directors to help the stage reach the public more effectively. According to researcher Cao Ngoc (Vietnam Theatre Association), "experimental theatre is a term used to refer to the pioneering nature of artistic movements to innovate the stage, born with the purpose of innovating the form, exploring the perception of culture in general, and of stage art in particular". The successes of the International Experimental Theatre Festival will contribute to suggesting many ideas about the form of handling dramatic situations, storytelling, decoration, music, and acting of actors. Through this, we can see the great effort of the organizing committee in organizing seminars after the performances with the participation of domestic and foreign experts, to clarify the story of experimental theatre. It is also a catalyst, bringing changes to the domestic stage and artists.