You and you, fucking move! You over there, you over there!
You and you, fucking move! You over there, you over there!
You and you, fucking move! You over there, you over there!
...and so it continues as we are dragged by Badac Theatre Company yelling and banging into the experience of the Jews who were sent to the Gas Chambers in Auschwitz/Birkenau.
This is not a piece of theatre, and so recounting a story would seem silly, it is the imposing of an experience which happened to 1,500,000 Jews within Auschwitz, when they were taken to the terrifying and yet chillingly efficient Gas Chambers. We are asked to imagine how that would feel, we are ask by actors banging metal and screaming to imagine how that would feel, and yet what I feel is disjointed. Disjointed from this experience, and not at all a part of it or one of them.
It is very hard. It is very hard to actually get an audience of comfortable Westerners and make them feel they are being humiliated and taken to their death. How can a company do that, without actually stripping members of the audience naked, without actually manhandling members of the audience? To do this of course you would need to have warning signs the size of the Berlin Wall so that those who entered would be prepared. But maybe the experience you would give them would be truer.
As it is we do not have this. We have shouting in a claustrophobic space, and performances which although brave, are all given on one level. All bombardment and no light and shade. One of the most powerful moments is when our performers are dragged to some horrible place that we do not yet see, and beaten. Their screaming and the sound of the beating evokes something much more powerful than what has previously been presented. At the end when the word love is used this is another powerful moment. Love in an aggressive angry place. Badac believe that without violence we have nothing, that they are focused on human violence primarily and although their belief in extreme political art is admirable, this has lead to a sadly one leveled show.
This is indeed an experience, an experience in assault and aggression. An experience in shouting and desperation. But where are the silences that can say so much, and where is the focus on stillness, and quiet human connections? By bulldozing over these moments, Badac cheat themselves out of really showing how it would have felt. They are unable to fully integrate the audience in the experience, and yet one feels that with a little more peace, a little more horror and a little less muscle, this could have been a deeply disturbing and thought provoking piece.
