Mountains and Valleys
This is my first theatre article yessss! Coming to the third article in my blog I thought about doing a writing about the musical Cabaret (no kidding my ultimate favourite), but I am going to watch the new casted version starring John McCera and Aimee Lou Wood so might as well compare two versions after I watched it the second time! SOOO this article is going to be about a mime piece that is equally intriguing, called Still Life: Flesh, presented and performed by Still Life drama company based in Brussels.
The play tells four stories that happened in ordinary lives, amongst ordinary people——a son visiting his father on his deathbed in the hospital; a man completing his plastic surgery and celebrating it with his wife; a woman trying Virtual Reality game for the first time; and lastly four siblings at their mother’s funeral. Each of the stories has no more than four characters and four actors is all this play has. Between each scene the curtains in the centre of the stage would close and white light softly flashed within the black curtains(because the barbican centre only has two iron curtains that goes up and down to close up they added their own curtain made of fabric), long-drawn-out synchroniser music played along in minor keys. Each of the scenes blended with the transition, they made you laugh and laugh and laugh, until you bleed from the corner of your mouth.
The first scene started with the son waiting on the outside of his father’s ward, with the nurse over-dressed him with medical protections and repetitively asking him to sanitise his hands (which I think reflects on the procedures we took back in COVID-19’s pandemic), and sealing his phone with a plastic bag. With that he went into the ward, but with a ringing going off his phone and him trying to open the plastic bag and failing, his father died as he untied the tape-sealed gloves, not even noticing his father’s death. One might never know how his father died, nor why he died at the very moment he out his mind on something else. During this course he didn’t shed any tears for his father, his movements were concealed, emotions were minimised, the long silence before the phone rang foretold something was about to happen. The beeping noise of the heart monitor were anticipated to become a long one, but when it actually did, we audiences burst out laughing, as the son slowly realised, got closer to his father, and started his own laughing, or even mocking, and then almost turned into crying, our laughter slowly faded away.
The second scene was in a fairly cozy room, the man’s head was wrapped with bondages, he and his significant other dressed proper, in their more joyful state of mind, the man gave his lover a pair of scissors as a gift, for her to uncover his bandage. As she was doing this her complexion shifted as her lover looked unsuitable for her own taste (like a mannequin), the man on the other hand found d himself ravishing, tried multiple times to “get in the business” with his lover. Yet she ran around the room, away from him, made him scratched his face by accident, with the man trying to get the mirror to look at and with his lover trying to avoid it, he fell hard tearing his plastic works and twisted his appearance. With the falling and rising screams of the men and the women, the curtain slowly closed. This made me wondered why did they reach such agreement for the surgery to be done in the first place, and two hearts the were moving in the same direction shifted because of different ideals and expectations. Individuality were emphasised, then destroyed because of an unanimously hideous accident.
Then it comes to a more “Love, Death, and Robot” feeling scene where a middle aged woman standing in the middle of a blank room wearing a VR headset, with a technician sitting on the side. amongst the adventure stories the VR game brought her, she chose the “Titanic Adventure” with all the romantic possible details contained in it. We laughed so hard as she saw herself as Rose, meeting Jack, fell in love and laid on the ground to let him draw a naked portrait of her. Then she lost him as the ship sank, screamed at the top of her lungs, as the technician took her headset off, called her back to reality, she slowly put her real jacket back on, deep in her breathe, leaving the room of nothing, absentminded, with nothing but herself. Our laughter slowly fades as she became desperate, drowned in the pain that seemed unreal to us, but real to her in an absolute state. After such experience that shifted her reality all at once, she got stuck in an identity crisis, as the thirty forty years of life before was built in the way she got used to. It was like a dream to her, waking up into morning anxiety, and we are the ones that watched her finishing her somniloquy.
And finally the last scene took place in a restaurant, four siblings dressed in black, with their deceased mother’s portrait placed at the back. One arrived late carrying their mother’s ashes, greeted the others in distinct different levels of affection. One lighted a cigarette, became agitated. One carried her pregnant belly, and the last one seems to be genuinely indifferent. They went through the regular procedures of a funeral, sang a song a toasted. When one of them takes out a ladle and all four of them brought out four small urns to separate the ashes, we laugh again, and when one of them tried to get more ashes than others and the ash spilled out the crowd was in an uproar, the ash spilling competition then intensifies and so did the laughing, screaming and shouting filled the theatre as it wasn’t until later we found out the pregnant sister is going into labour. The siblings slowly gathered as the sister’s water broke and the water kept on leaking for a good two minutes, the water seemed to be coming out from every part of her body as if it is all the tears they didn’t care to shed for their mother. Her siblings, instead of carrying her to the hospital, they surrounded her wrapped her around their bodies. Warm, yellow light beam glowed down, pouring upon the four bodies of flesh. There was an unspeakable religiosity about the scene when all four actors cuddle together, as if life and death just met and touched eyes. Death was portrayed as mild as possible, through the restaurant, the ladle, and the children’s lack of emotion. Though they have fulfilled their responsibilities by their conscience as their mother’s children, they couldn’t care less. All the fuss was given to the not-yet new born baby. Emotions are finally triggered by the screaming of the pregnant sister, the caring seem to start only when actual pain and torture are witnessed by bare eyes.
The whole structure of this play is incredibly clear and leading, like four small tides combining into a wave, every scene starts with a daily anecdote, as the stories developed something anticipated, but at the same time a bit unexpected happened, that triggers a comedy effect, but when the effect is at its highest, the original tragic characteristic of these four anecdotes started to be enlarged. Like I mentioned, they made you laugh and laugh, so hard until you cry and your mouth bleeds. If we can look closer into the context of what triggered the first three anticipated plot twists in scene one to three, we will find out all of those are caused by principle of humanity. We invented cell phones to make our lives easier where everything is in reach, but it made us addicted; we undergo plastic surgeries to alter the flaws in our appearances to feed up our vanity; we want to created another dimension because our ego of conquest is insatiable, every desire grows bigger than the other. It started from the process of social development, improvement of technology, debates around controversies of those social developments, up to more serious ethnic issues and grander doubts and evaluations of the world created by human race, and finally reaches the end, scene four, returning back to the purest form of resolution to all these problems —— death, and rebirth. The play ended with the fourth scene, and the fourth scene ended everything. The stories are thoughtfully written, arranged, to take us on a ride through us humans, what we created and how our own creations lead us to a euphoria, from a hill, and then to the road of no return, down to a valley.
I have been trying to be mutual as possible with the identities, the relationships, and the former experienced but untold anecdotes of the characters. But at the same time this play seems to want me to assume the backgrounds of theirs. Only that it make sense, only that the things I mentioned above contains value. But as I am assuming these things, like a normal person would do, I linked these characters with my life, the things I have experienced and the people I have met. I turned this play into the flesh that is around me, and that how it is, that how it is supposed to be, flesh, is all of us, all who lives and breaths. I guess that is what this play is trying to do, at the same time what most comedy is trying to do—— they are trying to tell us that we are the ones that brings us laughter and humour. But at the same time what most tragedy is also trying tell us is that, what we built to make us laugh makes us cry, too. It is a play that climbs the highest hills and roll along the lowest valleys.
Another thing I want to add before I end this article, is that I want to pay my respect to those wonderfully impressive mime actors, their showcase of movements and expressions is out of this world. Their acts were deeply imprinting as if there are any verbal lines being said (even when all the noise they made in this play is either screaming, laughing or shouting Jack’s name). Mime it self as an art form, I would say it is quite primitive and animal-like, it forces us to pay attention on the body languages of the actors, and that is also how they would dig up the comedic and tragic elements. But even with just that, they made me came up with all these seven heavy chunks of paragraphs and a half-an-hour long recording right after I finish watching, opening my voice memo on my way home from the Barbican Centre. Now all I can say is, thank you Still Life company, for charging me 27 pounds and walking me through the whole course of human lore.
我博客的第一篇戏剧文章耶！第三篇文章呢，本来是想写一篇关于音乐剧Cabaret的文章（年度最爱目前可以说是），但我后面还是要二刷看约翰·麦克拉和艾米·卢·伍德主演的新卡，所以不妨后面比较一下这两个版本吧！那么今天这篇文章将讲述一部同样引人入胜的哑剧，翻译过来叫做众生（Still Life: Flesh），由来自比利时布鲁塞尔的静物戏剧公司表演。
该剧讲述了四个发生在平凡人间的故事——一个儿子去医院探望病榻上的父亲；一个男人完成了他的整形手术并和他的爱人一起庆祝；一位中年女人第一次尝试虚拟现实游戏；最后是四个兄弟姐妹参加他们母亲的葬礼。每个故事的角色不超过四个，而这部剧只有四个演员。每一场戏之间，舞台中央的黑色幕布会被拉上，黑色的幕布中闪着柔和的白光（因为巴比肯中心只有两块上下收合的铁幕，方便起见这部剧添加了自己的幕布），伴随着冗长的小调合成器音乐。每一个场景都被背景音乐和灯光过渡融合在一起。这部剧给我的感觉就是它是一部让你一直笑啊笑啊笑，直到你从嘴角流血为之俯首的作品。
第一个场景开始于儿子在他父亲的病房外等候，护士帮他穿上了紧裹的医疗防护服，并反复要求他不停的洗手（这也反映了我们在 新冠流行期间采取的程序措施)，并用塑料袋密封他的手机。折腾了半天终于让他进了病房，但在病房里时他的手机铃声突然响起，当他在绞尽脑汁打开塑料袋时，他父亲去世了，他甚至没有注意到他父亲的死。而在这个过程中，儿子没有流泪，他的动作小心翼翼，情绪压抑，电话响起前的一段长时间沉默似乎预示着有什么事即将发生，而心电监护仪的嘟嘟声和观众预想的一样会变长，但当这件事它真的发生了的时候，观众们却都捧腹而笑，但当舞台上的儿子慢慢意识到父亲已经离开时，他慢慢向他靠近，自己开始了对自己痛苦的嘲笑，笑着笑着，笑声变成了哭腔。而我们的笑却慢慢淡了下去。
第二个场景发生在一个温馨的小房间里，男人的头上缠着绷带，他和他的爱人身着正装，心情愉悦地为男人的整形手术庆祝。男人同时送给爱人了一把剪刀作为礼物，让她帮忙揭开他的绷带。当她慢慢地把绷带剪开一圈一圈取下来时，她的脸色逐渐苍白，因为她的爱人长的过于不符合她的预期（他像个塑料人体模特）。而男人却觉得自己万分迷人，多次试图引诱女人进行些什么。她为了避开爱人的追逐，开始绕着房间跑了起来，在这场追逐中男人不小心抓破了脸，他想拿镜子看看，女人把镜子藏起来。在这场追逐战中，男人重重地摔倒在柜子后，脸上的填充物彻底变形，他的整张脸都被扭曲成了一片，伴随着男人和女人此起彼伏的尖叫，幕布被缓缓拉上。 这其实让我产生了思考，为什么他们会达成让男人进行手术的协议，这两颗本来朝着同一个方向前进的心，却因为不同的理想和期待而走上了岔路。人与人之前的区别被这一幕展现的一览无余，而在这展示之后这个区别也因为这一达成一致的负面意外，一览无余地被摧毁。
然后是下一幕是很给我带来“爱、死亡和机器人”感觉的场景，一位中年妇女戴着 VR 头盔站在一个空旷的白色房间房间中央，旁边坐着一名监督她的技术人员。在VR游戏里所包含的剧情冒险故事里，她选择了游玩“泰坦尼克号历险记”，其中包含了所有电影里出现的情爱细节嗯哼。当她把自己当成是萝丝，她遇到杰克，坠入爱河，她甚至躺在“沙发”上让他为她画一幅裸体肖像画，当时所有观众都笑的真的很大声。而后来随着轮船沉没，她失去了他，她撕心裂肺地尖叫着，而工作人员在这时为她摘下了耳机，将她拉回现实，她慢慢地穿上了属于自己的夹克，呼吸急促，神情恍惚，离开房间时心不在焉，孤身一人。当她变得绝望时，我们的笑声再次慢慢消失，淹没在对我们来说似乎不真实，但对她来说绝对真实的痛苦中。在经历了这次瞬间改写现实的经历后，女人陷入了一场自我认识的危机，似乎在她的生命力，之前的三四十年的生活是完全按照她习惯的外貌和规则所构建的。这场VR对她来说就像一场梦，醒来时陷入了我们每个人或多或少都会有的早晨焦虑，而观众们是看着她入睡，在旁边听着她说梦话的那些人。
最后一幕发生在一家餐厅里，兄弟姐妹四人，各个身着黑衣，餐厅的后方放着他们已故母亲的遗像。其中一个负责携带他们母亲的骨灰的人迟到了，迟到后她以截然不同的态度与自己的兄妹们打着招呼；一位兄弟慢慢变的急不可耐，抽起了烟；一位姐妹挺着大肚子；而最后一位兄弟自始至终毫无感情，无动于衷。他们走完葬礼的常规程序，敬酒唱歌。抽烟的兄弟随后拿出一把金属汤勺，四个人各个拿出四个小骨灰盒用汤勺一人一勺来分骨灰，我们又笑了。当其中一个人突然多舀了几勺时，四人开始了一段你死我活的争夺，骨灰被洒了出来，观众们一片哗然，“撒灰比赛”随之愈演愈烈，笑声、尖叫声、呼喊声充满了整个剧场，直到后来当惨叫没过吵闹声是，人们才意识怀孕的姐姐临盆了。其他兄妹三人慢慢向姐姐靠近，姐姐的羊水破了，而羊水流了整整两分钟，直到后面水似乎从她身体的每一个部位都开始溢出，仿佛是他们不舍得为妈妈哭的泪从姐姐的身上流了出来。三人没有将她送往医院，而是将她团团围住，将她包裹在他们中央。暖黄色的光柱倾泻在四具肉身之上。四个演员拥抱在一起的场景有一种难以言喻的宗教感， 像是生与死相见相触。死亡在葬礼的餐厅和汤勺，以及兄弟姐妹的真情实感的缺失中，被描述的意外温和含蓄。在作为母亲的孩子所驱使的良心之下，他们可以说是确实尽到了自己的责任，但除此以外他们再也不管不顾。在场所有的大动静都献给了一个还未出生的婴儿。整一幕的气氛终于在怀孕姐姐的尖叫声中被推向高潮，而这也让我们意识到，所有的关心和在意似乎只有在亲眼目睹真正的痛苦和折磨时才会真正流露。
众生这一整部剧的剧情结构结构非常清晰且有带动性，就像四股小浪潮汇聚成一股巨浪一般，每一幕都从一个日常轶事开始，随着故事的发展，意料之中，但同时发生了一些意想不到的事情的意外发生，，从而引发了喜剧效果，但是当这一喜剧效果达到最高潮的时候，这四个故事本身的悲剧性便被逐渐放大。就像我前面提到的，它们会让你笑个不停，一直笑到你哭出来，嘴巴流血。如果我们仔细观察一下是什么触发了场景一至三中的三个情节转折，我们会发现这些转折的发生全是始于人性。我们发明手机是为了让我们的生活更轻松，使一切都触手可及，但它却让我们疯狂上瘾；我们接受整形手术来改变我们外表上的所谓缺陷来满足我们的虚荣心；我们妄想创造另一个维度，另一个世界，因为人类的征服欲永不求满足，每个欲望都比比皆是。从社会发展的过程，到科技的进步，围绕社会性争议话题展开讨论，过渡到更严重的人类种族问题，更宏大的对人类制造出的这个世界的质疑与归纳总结，最后到第四幕，我们回归到了解决所有这些问题最纯粹的方式——死亡和重生。整部剧于第四场结束，从而结束一切。这些故事的编排被精心雕琢，反复推敲最终完美呈现，带着观众们穿越人类本身， 出于我们之手的作品以及这些作品如何使我们从山上走向荒唐的欢愉，然后走上一条滚下山谷的不归路。
我在写这篇文章的时候一直试图尽可能地让角色的身份、关系和那些没有被陈述的，他们曾经经历的往事保持一个相对不被过度解读的状态。但同时我感觉这部剧似乎就是想让我去解读它们，让我自己去探究那些没有被言语表达出来的层层关系。只有我自己去联想解读了，这些身份关系和往事才会变得有逻辑，才会拥有真正的价值。但当我像个正常人一样开始揣测和假设时，我便开始把这些角色与我的生活、我的经历和我所接触的人们联系起来。我把这部戏剧作品转化成了我身边的那些芸芸众生，而我感觉这样的转化也是这部作品想要达到的目的，它告诉我们这些人便是我们所有人，每一个活在世界上会呼吸心跳的肉体。这部剧想要实现的的，同时也是大多数喜剧想要实现的，便是在告诉我们，我们是带给我们自己带来欢笑和幽默的人。但与此同时，大多数悲剧也在试图告诉我们的是，令我们发笑的食物也会让我们逐渐因为本身存在的悲剧元素而哭泣。众生，它是一部攀登上了最高的山丘并走向最低的山谷的好剧。
在结束本文之前，我最后最后想补充一点，我想向那些令我印象深刻的哑剧演员表示我的敬意，他们的演绎着实是让我震惊。他们让没有任何一句台词，长达快两个半小时的哑剧在我的脑海里充满声响（他们在这部戏中发出的所有声音除了尖叫，大笑，或者喊杰克和唱歌其他啥没有）。哑剧作为一种艺术形式，我会说它其实是原始的，拥有一种动物般用叫声交流的形态，它迫使我们将注意力放在演员的肢体表达上，而肢体表达也成为了他们挖掘喜剧和悲剧元素的方式。但即便如此，他们还是使我在看完之后吐出了这七个大段和在我从巴比肯中心回家的路上录的半个小时的录音。现在的我只能说，感谢布鲁塞尔的静物戏剧公司，收了我27镑票钱，带我在自己的铁笼子里游走了一遍只展出人类的动物园。
Image sources:
https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2023/event/london-international-mime-festival-still-life-flesh
https://www.thereviewshub.com/still-life-flesh-london-international-mime-festival-barbican/
