| The NET Festival opened with a performance by Joseph Nudge In one lampshade, as expected, a light bulb is screwed in, and from the other there is a knife hanging from a string. A man sits on a chair and raises his legs so that he is not overwhelmed by the madness that is flooding his room along with the continuously pouring rain (in the soundtrack there is either a monotonous noise or a thunderstorm rumbles somewhere). Joseph Naja's one-man show "The Diary of an Unknown", which opened the NET festival, drags the viewer into the choreographer's personal hell for sixty minutes. Really, in order to enjoy such art, you have to be a very prosperous person.
Or very young. That is, so that there is an unbreakable wall between this person and your cozy life, or you have not yet realized that all this is too close, and happens not only to other people, not only to this gutta-percha little man on the stage. It was all with him - Nudge, who had previously varied the motifs of Kafka and Buchner, for the first time composed a play based on his personal diaries - but with you it will not be, no, no, it will not be, you are protected, with your friends and your country everything is always will be OK. Then you can watch.
One can admire the absolute musicality of the artist. The Hungarian born in Serbia responds to the trembling national tune with some kind of bone spasms, some kind of muscle fractures. He either falls to the ground with a flourish, or tries to get up from the ground with his legs crossed, or for a second curls up into a baby’s pose. And this tune always seems to jerk him up from the inside, as if he is turning him inside out, reminding him that nothing can be done, you were born here.
One can rejoice at Naja's directorial and poetic talent. Having entered the room where the strangled doll (doll) is hanging on a rope, the artist cuts the rope and transfers the “body” to some oblong container. Coffin? Probably, but also a cradle: the hero rocks the domina like a cradle with a child. When we are talking about another suicide - with the help of a straight razor, the hero, having soaped his face, stands behind a transparent film (mirror?) and concentrates on cutting it, as if ripping up his image.
Have I not yet said that the play is dedicated to two suicides? So, from his diary Nudge took only those pages (let's hope there are others) that talk about two of his friends who voluntarily gave up their lives. He was also inspired by the poems of the Hungarian poet Otto Tolnai: “I beg you: do not save me. / Let the rat, the diligent tunnel driller, / Build a road through my stomach, / Let the wolf, / Clutching me, / Noisily chew my face <... > Looking at the dead loved ones, / God, I ask you: don’t save me <...> I know you don’t save anyone / But suddenly you make an exception for me / I beg you: don’t.”
The hero of the play is on the verge of committing suicide. In his hands is either a rope (a rather thick rope, I must say), which he adjusts this way and that, or a long ax, which he thrusts into the tabletop and then places his head next to it, as if posing on the block. Everything is played convincingly, the mood is skillfully heightened, and at the end, having paid tribute to the artist’s skill with generous applause, I want to follow the example of Bernard Shaw: “Having endured the long torture of a piano evening, I knew one way to calm down: turn to an experienced dentist.” Anna GORDEEVA |
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