david hare: wall

I've finally finished the collection of lectures by (Sir) David Hare that I picked up at the National Theatre in London last January. Quite coincidentally came across a recording of Hare reading his new monologue, Wall, here. Give it a listen if political theatre or Palestine/Israel is your thing.

P.S. Hare has written two monologues about Palestinian-Israeli issues. An excerpt from the first, Via Dolorosa (1998) here.

glu glu

Two dancers in black briefs saunter hand-in-hand down a dock. They wear sparkly gold shopping bags over their heads. Suddenly, the screen is filled by a striped shirt stretched taut over a potbelly.

"Is a dance project," explains the undeniably Italian cameraman, ushering the bewildered belly out of the shot, "Contemporary dance project!"

A shared peal of laughter, an inside joke. Artists and amateurs, sitting cross-legged in an airy room of the splendid Museu do Oriente.

Complicity.

---

Déjà vu.

Grade 8, 9, 10.... Amman or Dubai, maybe Cairo, one of those international schools. It's the first night of the arts festival: the showcase. We strut and show, so that the next morning we can get down to the dirty business of working, creating together.

Pointe to Point is a project bringing together 20 young choreographers from Europe and Asia. The Lisbon phase is their first real meeting. The public is invited to participate in their introductions, to meet the artists as individuals before they form groups and begin to collaborate. Over the weekend everyone shared something: a short dance piece, a presentation of previous work, installations, videos, conversations.

Like our high school showcases. Thankfully, no American School of Dubai-style cheesy jingles. (EMAC Fine Arts Festival, Festival, is full of fun/EMAC Fine Arts Festival, and we are ASD!!)

---

This project is co-organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation and alkantara, the Portuguese independent arts organisation that makes my heart skip a beat. If all goes well, I will be their most enthusiastic intern next year and their festival will be the topic of my thesis.

As exciting as everything I saw this weekend was, I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. What can I possibly offer these people? There were so many of them, young, all with haircuts more assymmetric than mine.

The pond is turning out to be a bit bigger than this little fish thought.

vilnius

There are holes in the sides of Vilnius's buildings. Sometimes at street level, sometimes near entrances, sometimes facing allies. Regularly rectangular, so you know they're there on purpose.

Proof of age, reminders of reconstruction, testaments to history. Some buildings wear them proudly. Others -- whose holes are less regular, less rectangular, less on purpose -- stand firmly despite the holes.

At the top of the hill was a large church, its yellow paint a faint memory. In the niches on the facade, the ghosts of a frescoed Jesus and his saints. A once grand triple set of steps slumped from the door to the ground.

A paper tacked on the front door announced mass times in unfamiliar alphabets. Greek Catholics worship here, as they did when the church was built centuries ago. But when the Russians moved in they claimed this church, suppressing in this way what they believed to be a covert Catholic conversion operation targeting Orthodox peasants. The Uniate or Ukranian Church, a recognised practice within Roman Catholicism, wouldn't regain legal status -- and control of this Church of the Holy Trinity -- until the fall of the Soviet Union.


The history is in the walls. Heaters fixed on green paint, peeling away to reveal bright geometric patterns and carefully carved Greek letters.

Scaffolding, hanging wires, arched window frames piled in corners. A desk for an alter, school rows for pews, mismatched rugs covering mismatched floors. Wood panels hiding piles of scrap wood, garbage, ornaments.

This is the hidden story of may of Vilnius' churches and chapels, gothic and baroque, Catholic and Orthodox. The old town's skyline is defined by pristine steeples, freshly painted bell towers and copper onion domes not yet oxidised. Gaps have been filled, edges smoothed, character whitewashed. 'Restored' -- to sterility.

out

“You’ll be back soon,” my grandmother says, putting her clammy cheek next to mine. “Right?”

“In and out, in and out,” I reply vaguely.

I have been “in” – which is to say, in Lisbon – since Sunday. Today is Wednesday, and as the Scandinavian landscape from my porthole confirms, I am definitely out.

It’s been three hours since we took off from a mercifully cooler Lisbon towards Copenhagen, via Stockholm. The pilot has just announced that rain and chilly temperatures (10 degrees) will greet us – which rather accurately describes the 5-day forecast for my final destination of Vilnius, Lithuania.

In Vilnius I will be attending the Erasmus Mundus Students and Alumni Association General Assembly, in my capacity as course representative. On either side of the conference programme I have given myself a day for which I have made no attempt to prepare. Guidebook-, companion-, and preconception-less, I intend to wander, eat mysterious food and get soaked by several days of heavy rain.

I’ll be in again next Monday, out to Brussels for a few days at the end of the month, in for the first two weeks of July, out to the Avignon Festival in France from the 17th to the 24th, before pushing still outwards to Amsterdam to round off the month in the company of S and J.

All of August will be in – which is to say, in the sun, in the sea, at the beach.

Like I say, in and out.

Rain and 9 degrees as we pull in to Vilnius airport. Yes, it is June.

walter

Mademoiselle.

He pauses, adjusts his spectacles.

The post office has been open since ten o’clock this morning.

Another pause. He looks down at his watch, causing the specs to slip to the end of his nose. It occurs to me that when he raises his head he will be eyeing me over the frames. I brace myself.

It is not at five minutes to closing that one attempts to send a large parcel.

I could explain that this is the second time I have been to his post office today. I want to whine about the lies on the website and the uninformed lady at the first post office. I consider sobbing that if he doesn’t take my things I will be bootless and bookless in Nice come September.

Instead, I say, very quietly

There are three.

Eyebrows are raised. Nostrils flare. Lips tighten.

He flings a fistful of forms across the counter and spits

Sit. Fill. Return. Fast.

I fill the forms to natural light because someone turns of the fluorescents. By the time I return it is down to me, him and the security agent turning people away at the door.

He rings up the total. I breathe and unsheathe my visa.

More Pinter pausing. The nostrils eventually communicate what words do not.

I consider protesting the ridiculously of the Brussels central post office not accepting visa. I want to ask who the hell carries 130 euros in cash. I almost storm out in indignation.

Instead, I say, very quietly

Well, nothing.

It has been a harrowing afternoon and, frankly, I’m spent.

He sends me to the ATM outside. I am behind a couple who takes ages because, judging by the cloud of shopping bags, they no longer have any money to take out.

He must be worried I’ve dumped my boxes on him and run away laughing because he comes out of the post office to look for me. Which is convenient, because I need him to get past the equally anxious to leave security agent.

We exchange money and receipts. He stands, pulls up his pants and sighs

Bon week-end.

I want to tell him that I didn’t do it on purpose. I can’t decide whether to apologize. I almost hug him.

Instead, I say, very, very quietly (remember I am spent)

Merci.