(Image of ‘Diminuscopio’, Boxes, UnterWasser. Photo by Michela-Gandolfo)

Puppetring attended the final evening of IF Festival at the Espai Joan Brossa and saw three shows: BOXES by UnterWasser, an Italian theatre research group founded in 2014 by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio; ¿Y AHORA QUÉ? (And Now What?), by author-actor Cristián Weidmann and composer-musician Adriano Galante; andCera: 500 hores de vol (Wax: 500 Hours of Flight) by Carlos Gallardo, with dramaturgy by Carlos Gallardo and Dora Cantero, directed by the actor-author with Nina Solà and Jordi Font.

I this first article we will talk about Boxes.

BOXES, by the three artist-performers Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti and Giulia De Canio comprises several miniature pieces. A mere thirty minutes is designated for the show, but it was a true feast.

As they say themselves, the company focuses on the intersection between visual theatre and contemporary art, exploring the mutual ‘contamination’ between these disciplines and developing a unique poetic and imaginative language. Their approach allows them to explore different facets of human nature in its endless complexity.

Cassetiera di Nonna

The individual audience members rotate through the first three pieces, provided with headphones in each case. The show began with an invitation to sit at Cassetiera di Nonna (Grandmother’s Chest-of-Drawers). Through a peephole in a raised chest-of-drawers you discover, in half light, a space that resembles a room in a dolls house but is occupied by objects and sundry odds and ends from a sewing box. A small electric lightbulb enters, throwing a glow on each figure it seems to observe. Over the course of several minutes –although an awareness of time may abandon the absorbed viewer– objects become animated and sometimes interact: a single, vertical pill capsule with a tiny face sketched in felt-tip; a rattling pill box; two large wooden spools of coloured thread; an oblong toffee, wrapped in blood red cellophane, and so on. In the course of their antics they display something of an inner life, not only theirs but, of course, the grandmother’s. A flat, square foil pack, possibly containing a condom, causes a yellow tape measure to unfurl and follow it, snakelike, offstage.

Image of Cassetiera di Nonna. Photo UnterWasser

Materials and colour are judiciously used, and design and performance, environment and action perfectly balanced; within the demanding limits of time and space the focus is always clear. Jazz music, Nonna’s favourite one assumes, is an uplifting accompaniment that enhances the humour and piquancy.  When the lights dim, music ends and stillness returns, there is a wish for more! As if in response, the host-performer invites you to open one of the top drawers: “Nonna has left a sweet for you”. Like the one in the show it is wrapped in red cellophane; and discovered later in a pocket… delicious.

Diminuscopio

For the second performance, Diminuscopio, you are invited to sit on one side of a table with a wooden box on it. There is a rectangular opening in front of you. The previous occupant of the seat has moved to the other side of the table. You follow instructions through headphones, such as “place the small sewing-machine bobbin in the middle of the box; press the yellow button on top of the box; blow into the box; pick up the feather, insert it into the box and wiggle it”. As the participant on the opposite side watches the action inside the box, and reacts with signs of amusement or delight to what you are doing, apparently, a peculiar sensation of both relationship and separation arises.

When your time of following instructions comes to an end (“it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the instructions”, the voice said at the start), you change sides while your former stool is occupied by someone else and, as you watch what is going on inside the box, all becomes clear!

‘Kaleidoscopio’. Photo UnterWasser

The operations seem to interact with miniature film projections seen within; including, for example, the magical appearance of a young woman who sits on a giant sewing-machine spool. Joined by two more women, they are alternately affected by a violent wind, an invisible tickling attack and other phenomena. The ideas are ingenious and the performances, by the three founding members of Unterwasser, are superb. Peering into the box with its little figures and surreal events is like watching a mind at work. Later, the delicious sense of complicity generated between the co-audience members lead to animated conversations about the narrative mechanism and one’s perceived role in making things happen. A lesson lingers, too, humorously transmitted, about blindly following instructions.

Kaleidoscopio

The trilogy continues with Kaleidoscopio (although the names of the pieces were not given, helping to maintain the intrigue). The third host-performer invites you to sit at an object resembling a semi-translucent, cone-shaped telescope. Here, again, the mood is quite different: absorption in the wonders of what proves to be a kaleidoscope where beautiful images are created with leaves, grasses and other objects, placed on the outside of the cone. In this last of the three pieces using movement, the soundscape was integral to the atmosphere, and the bewitching experience was both surprising and relaxing: a brief immersion in nature, created with a selection of ephemeral objects. Mention should be made of the excellent music that is a feature of all three pieces.

Kaleidoscopio. Photo UnterWasser

The period in each world –a perfect capsule, unexpected and satisfying– comes to an end. Complementing one another in interesting ways, they draw one’s thoughts back when the experience is over. (How remarkable that so many intense and vivid experiences can be created in such a short space of time. How little we really understand another person’s inner world and motives. What unexpected consequences an anonymous authority may have. How life-enhancing and irreplaceable is nature, ever more fragile. …)

The efficient but friendly presence of the three guides, who each deliver us to a new world (the word ‘psychopomp’ comes to mind, mythological guide to the other world or, for Jungians, a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms) creates a very favourable ambience for this multifaceted gem of a show.

Postcards from Rio

The other works in BOXES are static yet remarkably dynamic. In Postcards from Rio the three pieces are presented as guided visits to three neighbourhoods by three citizens. Each box is accompanied by a simple map. Lua, Malu or Rómulo, speak to us in a relaxed informative way through headphones, while ambient sound such as traffic or the breaking of waves add to the chosen register. What we see inside each box resembles model stage sets with superimposed scenery flats, each representing a significant element of the place in the individual’s story. Expertly orchestrated, the experience created a sense of connection to the city and its people.

Finally, there is a return to nature with Il Bosco (The Wood), a beautiful nocturnal forest scene animated by recorded sounds.

Credits

Original Idea by Valeria Bianchi, Aurora Buzzetti, Giulia De Canio and Francesco Capponi.
Software, design and programming of circuits by Francesco Bianchi.
With thanks to: Malu Costa, Romulo Chindelar, Lucas Popeta.
Production: UnterWasser
Executive production: Pilar Ternera / NTC
With the support of: Cambio Festival (Rio de Janeiro), Crossing the Sea, Centro di Residenza della Toscana (CapoTrave/Kilowatt Sansepolcro).