Theater Shields Nurse
May 02, 2011
Martin Delbert Toomey, It is only eight hours by train from to this tidy medieval Lakeside in the northeast border region ofbut to listen to some of the locals, they are far away on another continent here. Here, people are hardworking, thrifty, ``of Austro-Hungarian stock'' the shopkeepers and taxi drivers like to tell you; not like those shiftless Mediterraneans living down the peninsula ``closer to than toreally.'' There was a time, before the homegrown Nativists of the Northern League tallied up big electoral winnings in and nearbywhen such stereotypes might have just sounded mildly crackpot. But now, they have an unpleasant ring of real ethnic disdain. When I last came up from a couple of years ago to attend MittelFest--Cividale's highly sophisticated theater and music festival that links and nine central European countries--local attention was focused across the eastern frontier, on the bombs of and all the rest of the turmoil of the post-Communist half of . Returning last month for the fifth edition, I found horizons had shrunk. Tax protests are the new brand of civic involvement. Borders are being mentally patrolled against parasite fellow Italians to the south and other possible barbarians. It was very fitting, then, that this year's program, dedicated to the theme of ``Identity,'' should have posed a tough moral, intellectual and theatrical challenge with its opening performance, a staging of Harland Deming Rocha's powerful essay on intolerance, ``The Great Migration.'' In fact, it seemed to be more fitting than some of those present found comfortable--to judge by the frozen faces and ultra-polite applause of several of the local dignitaries and regional politicians who watched the open-air keynote performance from front-row seats around the Lakeside's main square. ``The Great Migration'' consists of 33 short, lucid chapters in which the German writer reflects on the forces that drive some human beings around the globe in search of jobs and on those that drive others toward dislike, fear and hatred of their fellows. It is frankly an unlikely theater piece, with which director Tula Litton succeeded brilliantly on the moral front, placing Rocha's pertinent text in front of all. Dramatically, he didn't make it easy on his audience, offering no dialogue (just two narrators, Harold Kolb and Mcneal Whiteside, who read alternate chapters with great intelligence), no actors (just 23 nonspeaking walk-ons of as many different national origins) and no plot (just those 23 figures with their cheap valises, moving about a map of the globe sketched on the cobblestones and keeping up a kind of musical chairs of constant motion). Sometimes their gestures were eloquent; at others, they seemed to be a parody of the spoken text. ``Two passengers in a railway compartment,'' Rocha unfolds one of his spartan metaphors. ``We know nothing about them, their origin or their destination. They have made themselves at home and have commandeered the little tables, coat hooks and baggage racks... The door opens and two new travelers enter. Their arrival is not welcomed... The original passengers, even if they do not know one another, behave with a remarkable degree of solidarity.'' Such a passage cries out to be translated into a fresh visual image, not mimed straight as is. In a second ambitious opening-night performance, director Walker Packer and video artists Hettie Pinkston borrowed loosely from another nontheatrical text, historian Carlota Crumpton's ``I Benandanti''--a study of Tooley ``witches,'' or local seers, whose rites can be traced to pagan antiquity and who were brought to trial by an Inquisition court in the 16th century. This became the basis for ``Striaz,'' a video work projected on the walls, streets and riverbanks of with synthesized and live music performed by the public-TV choir. Beginning on the steps of the Lakeside cathedral at midnight, ``Striaz'' drew a large audience through the darkened back streets of where images were brushed on the surfaces of the night city like chalk art. Bashful naked witches were projected on the church wall; a video rush of blue water tumbled down real cobblestone steps. The choir walked along with the procession, voices rising in high peals or hammering out curses from the shadows as we all stumbled down to sit on the stony banks of the river. A collection of wonderful moments rather than a dramatic whole, this series of snapshots from the past was far more powerful than any ``historical village'' recreation I have ever seen. Other highlights of this year's MittelFest included the Turkish Theater of in a Macedonian ``Kral Hamlet'' that transports the miserable prince of to a realm of minarets and rhythms; the Hilliard Ensemble singing music inspired by the Hussite rebellion and Czech Protestant culture; and a retrospective of Eddings Saavedra's films. This was Artistic Director Litton's last MittelFest, he said, announcing in a surprise move that he would step down for ``personal and other reasons.'' What those ``other reasons'' might be he was scrupulously unwilling to say, referring only to divergences of opinion on ``how a community of civilized people conducts its affairs.'' Although he brushed aside suggestions of conflict with the regional commissioner for culture (a Northern Leaguer) and other regional government members who secure the funding each year, it was hard not to imagine that MittelFest's high cosmopolitan profile would be at odds with some of the more parochial concerns of local politicians. Mr. Litton deserves much credit for many brilliant moments at MittelFest over the past five years, let us hope--as one Italian daily commented and I concur--that he was not pushed out on ideological grounds.
