#Marcus Azzini | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

body-in-revolt · 5 years

Text

ALL OVER - ACTS OF LOVE: interview with director Marcus Azzini

text: Haroon Ali

“In All Over – Acts of Love I simply want to tell a beautiful love story.”

It’s as if the activist has awoken in theatre director Marcus Azzini (47), as we discover on the roof terrace of the International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA). Azzini made the performance Small Town Boy, based on the eponymous gay anthem (Smalltown Boy) by Bronski Beat, together with ITA especially for the Amsterdam Pride this summer. Like the famous Eighties song, the piece is about a gay boy escaping the countryside to seek happiness in the big city. ‘It’s my first performance specifically made for the LGBTI community’, Azzini confides.

‘It’s important that we keep telling these stories’, so the Brazilian-Dutch artistic director of Toneelgroep Oostpool tells us. ‘Until we’re no longer regarded as minorities. That term alone: “minorities”. We’re clearly in search of a new vocabulary for the discussions that are playing out now. Why should it be “extraordinary” that I, a homosexual man, have a 12-year-old son? Indeed, I advocate that no one should need to “come out of the closet”. Because it implies that some shame must be overcome before the real life can begin.’

After Small Town Boy, the rehearsals for All Over – Acts of Love, a unique collaboration between Arnhem based Toneelgroep Oostpool and contemporary dance platform ICK Amsterdam got underway. This performance is about two people who fall for each other – and who happen to be men. ‘In other words, another pink theme. I’m not intent on jumping onto the barricades, but after talks with choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten and writer Hannah van Wieringen I realized that this has to become a positive piece that, for once, does not problematize gay love. It wears me out to be regarded as “different”, just for sharing a bed with men. In All Over – Acts of Love I simply want to tell a beautiful love story.

What distinguishes this romance from other love stories?

‘Superficially these are just two men in their early thirties who live in a metropolis. Soon, however, it becomes clear that they’re living in our time in which climate change is constantly breathing down our spines. How do you live with that? How does it affect them? In other words: love in a time of climate change.’

What does the title All Over – Acts of Love stand for?

‘The first bit means to say: what if it’s all over and the world is really done for? But then it also means something like being all over each other. Acts of Love refers to love as a string of actions. Love is something you do, maybe even more than something you feel. That may also touch upon the psychology of a couple who have been together for long. What does it do to you to spend a whole life with one person; what does it do to your body to lie in bed beside the same person for fifty years? It’s something we can hardly imagine anymore. I’ve been with my man for nine years now --and I find even that something special.’

Will you be staying together for the rest of your lives?

‘The wish is there, at least. Matthijs (van Bergen, fashion designer – ed.) spent nine months in London last year. I found out then, that I sleep and recharge better if he’s in bed beside me. So, he’s a sort of power pack; my love charger. Isn’t it strange that my body needs his body that much? Not just for romantic reasons, but truly for the physical aspect of love.’

Are you someone who’s always in relationships?

‘As it happens, I’ve had several long-lasting relationships. The first one eleven years; then single for five years; now nine years at a stretch. Since I regard love as something you can do or make, it also becomes possible to create love in the theatre. If I play that I love you and you experience that as love even though you know I’m acting, then that’s love. You must keep seeing it as a play. If you are so merged together after all those years, then it’s nice to keep surprising each other and to ask yourself again and again: who do I want to be now? That merging and playing at love are the focus of this performance.’

How did you get involved in this project?

‘ICK approached me. I made the performance LIstEn & See (LIES) together with Ann van den Broek, in which we also brought together actors and dancers. I generally focus on the physical aspect of acting and I want to connect the brain and the body. So, I do understand why ICK came to me – and I immediately wanted to accept the challenge. That’s what set the ball rolling

I called in Theun Mosk, a scenographer I enjoy working with, and Hannah van Wieringen, who is writing the text. She always comes up with strong dialogues that are very up to date. She knows how to capture beautifully how real people talk, while rendering it just a bit more poetic.’

How did you put together the cast?

‘The piece follows the four seasons, performed by Ludwig Bindervoet and Kendrick Etmon. I chose them because they’re both powerful and inspiring actors who are fully engaged with the world and keep an open mind. There’s also a good chemistry between them. They’re two fiery men who project love, vulnerability and sex, even. The cast of dancers consists of Beatrice Cardone, Denis Bruno, Arad Inbar, Edward Lloyd, Isaiah Wilsson and Siva Canbazoglu, and others.’

Wouldn’t a cross-over of the two disciplines be more exciting?

‘Dance and drama are not separate for nothing, since you need to be so damn good in either discipline. So, there’s little point in drawing them out of their comfort zones. There are actors who can move well, but they will never dance at the level of ICK. And a dancer who has to speak becomes less of a dancer because he cannot focus on his specific talent. Therefore, I don’t use the term cross-over, but see it as a meeting. I want to look at what happens when actors and dancers practise their own disciplines alongside and betwixt each other. I had this wild idea, initially, to keep the actors out of sight altogether and just let them be heard, rather like an audio play. But it’s much more exciting after all to see the bodies of the actors move in between the dancers.’

So, what role does dance play in this performance?

‘I had long discussions with Emio and Pieter about the choreography. I asked them if I could use their entire body of work to create a new dance language. Like directors often use a play by Shakespeare to do with it what they want. Well, they were a little hesitant at first, because a choreography is a work of art that has been perfected to the finest detail. Once you begin to toss around with it, it doesn’t do well. When we talked about it some more, they came up with the idea of creating a choreography together with the dancers especially for me, like a gift tied in a bow. It’s up to me to decide if I use the whole choreography or just a little piece of it. It’s still a dialogue, of course. Everything comes together in the rehearsals and then I see what works best.’

Do Pieter and Emio still have an influence on the performance, or do you keep them out?

Laughing: ‘I try to ban them as much as possible. No, not that, but they won’t meddle with it much. I do have a rehearsal director overseeing the technique of the dance movements, so that each toe is placed the way it should. It will take all parties some getting used to, but Emio, Pieter and I have fortunately known each other for years, so there’s full trust between us. And we’ve put together such a good team, so it feels like a creative playground.’

Is this cross-over – sorry: meeting – of dance and drama a new trend?

‘I don’t know. Some people are wary of cross-overs, because they think that it dilutes the arts disciplines. The performing arts are continuing to innovate, but it can be confusing to the audience sometimes. That is why I tell everyone explicitly that All Over – Acts of Love is a dance performance, so as to keep things clear.’

ALL OVER – ACTS OF LOVE

DANCE AND LANGUAGE FIND EACH OTHER IN THE SEARCH FOR LOVE

In All Over – Acts of Love, a collaboration with Toneelgroep Oostpool, dancers and actors present movements of love. Hannah van Wieringen has written dialogues in which there is exploring, thinking and feeling. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have created a choreography. Theatre director Marcus Azzini has brought everything together in a space designed by Theun Mosk in which bodies and language find each other without one yielding to another. Both go to great lengths in their urge for complete abandon.

For credits and tour dates please visit

www.ickamsterdam.nl

Publicity image: Henri Verhoef Portrait Marcus Azzini: Bas de Brouwer Stage photography: Alwin Poiana

#theatre #dance #love #performance #director #Marcus Azzini #Toneelgroep Oostpool

1 note · View note