Catching the Lokal

Earlier this month, the Lokal festival in Reykjavik, Iceland gathered international, experimental theater productions for the first time in the nation’s history, and the result left me anxious for next year. While it was modest in size — a total of seven companies gave one to three performances — Lokal felt remarkably diverse. Each production had a distinct aesthetic, so that even those with similar themes avoided feeling repetitive.

Several shows, for instance, tackled what it means to be insignificant. In No Dice an almost four-hour play from Nature Theatre of Oklahoma — seen at New York’s Soho Rep last year — the cast recreated their interviews with everyone from office workers to family members. Including every last “um,” “ah,” and clichéd turn of phrase. They gave unexpected power to the river of pointless speech that runs through our lives — because the throwaway sentences were delivered in over-the-top accents and accompanied by bold, nonsensical gestures. As a woman discussing her temp job, Anne Gridley sounded like a French class dropout, and while she strutted around in fishnets and high heels, she emphasized occasional words by rubbing her belly or thrusting an arm in the air.

These tactics made the dialogue seem so strange that I listened to it more closely. I was moved to realize that conversational flotsam often expresses a desperate desire for connection: We talk and talk because we want so much to be heard. And according to the show’s loving, generous conclusion, that need is worth celebrating. If we can just hear each other in a new way, things that seem useless might transform into something beautiful.

If No Dice pulled hope out of an entire community’s pointlessness, then L’effet de Serge — presented by Vivarium Studio, a French troupe led by French writer-designer Phillippe Quesne — did the same for the meaningless efforts of a single man. Serge (Gaëtan Vourc’h) is a quiet man who stages a two-minute performance in his apartment every Sunday. One or two of Serge’s friends come over, he offers them something to drink, and then he starts his show. He might light a sparkler that’s taped to a remote control car and drive it around the room, or step outside to blink a car’s headlights to the sounds of Wagner, but whatever he does, he asks his guests to leave immediately afterward.

Filled with extreme realism –awkward silences, stammered attempts from Serge’s friends to praise his work–the show almost seems shapeless. Vourc’h is so stoic that he hardly seems invested in what’s going on; but he’s not disengaged: he’s focused. Serge is driven by a need to make things and share them. We’re never told why he feels this way, but it’s clear that he does.

Because L’effet de Serge lacks conventional dramatic form, we’re forced to see that what he’s doing doesn’t impact the world around him. His work won’t set a plot into motion, and it won’t change anyone’s life. That’s the point. Humans strive onward, even when we’re not sure why, and sometimes we get a collection of caring friends who will encourage us, even if they don’t understand us. Maybe manufacturing a purpose in your own tiny sphere is the same as finding one in the great big world.

I also appreciated Badstofan, presented by the National Theater of Iceland and written by Icelandic cartoonist and playwright Hugleikor Dagsson, because both the play and the post-show talkback provided fascinating insight on the country’s anxieties. From the rosiest perspective, the badstofan was the “communal living room” of old-world Icelandic huts, where families gathered against the elements to work, sleep, and play. But Dagsson replaces that cozy scene with a dark, grotesque hovel where the most primal instincts get unleashed. When a strange creature from the sea — half man, half lizard (played by Stefan Hallur Stefansson) — wriggles his way into a family’s room, most of them reveal their bone-deep cruelty in response. And that’s a comment on the Icelandic character itself.

In the talkback, cast members explained that their own grandparents grew up in huts similar to those from primitive times, but that Icelanders now pretend they’ve been modernized for ages. There’s constant fear, they said, that the country could slide back to primitive life at any moment. The battle between the feral and the civilized makes the play exciting to watch, even if the production’s thinking is over-simplified. Good and evil are so neatly divided that it’s obvious which characters are supposed to be “right,” and it’s a cheat to make the simple-minded lizard man the receptacle of everything pure. That’s like saying anyone who thinks clearly is destined for a sullied soul, when the reality of any national identity is always more complicated.

Similar notions get a more ambiguous treatment in Ode to the Man Who Kneels by American writer-director-composer Richard Maxwell. A musical deconstruction of classic Hollywood westerns, it fills cowboys and saloon dancers with deep longing and private moments of fantasy. Even as they’re shooting and robbing, they’re gorgeous articulating their hunger for meaning.

That links the show to No Dice and L’effet de Serge, but Maxwell’s work is less confident that we’ll find a way to be okay. His mannered, minimalist style often leaves his actors frozen in place, turned in profile, while a single white light, sitting on a nearby table, washes the stage. Simple and striking, these images carry the enormous sadness of people who are unsure how they fit in the world.