Poetry of objects and emotions
Quo Vadis is a free group made up of various theatrical professionals. Founded in the mid 1980s in Salo, and working nationally and internationally from there, its leading figures have, from the beginning, been the director Otso Kautto and the playwright and poet Markku Hoikkala. The group is rememberd for many events, including the cemetery and greenhouse theatre events of the early years and and the Le Misanthrope of a couple of years back, rehearsed on the slopes of the Pyrenees and performed while the actors marched. Although the themes and forms – and external trends – have changed, Quo Vadis has stubbornly followed its own road. It has always begun the process of creation without waiting for a commission or for funding.
‘Quo Vadis is a creative tool,’ says the director Otso Kautto. ‘It is good to perform written plays in institutional theatres, but pieces which are open at both ends demand a different approach.’
One such piece is the Objects & Emotions project, of which the first part, The Poetics of Quo Vadis, was produced at the Finnish National Theatre in March. According to Kautto, the intention is not to explain or narrate, but to make theatre with non-verbal expression. The group does not use a pre-ordained format as an approach, but proceeds from one version to the next. Often, the sketches are more interesting than the end result.
The focus is not on the makers but on the theme: the alliance between objects and emotions. The piece is close to performance, but originates with the actors. For this reason it is, according to Kautto, theatre: ‘an attempt to reinvent the theatre’. The show swishes to be ‘childish and intelligent, amusing in a way which is not often seen in the theatre today’.
Objects cannot speak, but the emotions that are directed at them are perhaps more genuine life than the contorted relationships between people. In The Poetics of Quo Vadis, ‘any speech at all is whittled away and replaced with the poetry of objects and emotions’. The approach demands an unprejudiced approach from both makers and audience.
All of life, told by objects
In his introduction to the piece, Kautto, in a wetsuit and bucket, demonstrates his own personal history as a surfer. Then the surge of objects begins. Behind a newspaper-clad screen running across the stage, one surprise after another is revealed: oranges bouncing in the air measure time, important objects from the various stages of life wander from hand to hand and the actors’ faces and gestures reflect emotions and stories which the viewer is invited to tell himself: that is part of the fun of the piece.
The whole of life is to be found in The Poetics of Quo Vadis, from the mother’s breast and soft toys to the difficulty of choosing a career (which is reflected in headdresses that fall into heaps) and the destiny of an alcoholic, which is focused on a beer bottle. A bank-note that continually circulates grows crumpled: that which can only be measured in money loses its meaning as spiritual experiences grow, is my optimistic interpretation.
The Poetics is, above all, an actors’ theatre piece. Mimicry and various noises are at a maximum, as a hilarious telephone scene – with the actors as a cacophony of spluttering phones – shows. As a counterweight to this wordless theatre, the piece also includes a poem, ‘The word of the act’, performed by Markku Hoikkala, and the naïve comments uttered by the actors from time to time. The audience is reminded periodically of the dangers of excessive gravity by a man who enjoys his food (Kai Paavilainen) and a man who records his cries of angst on tape (Markku Maalismaa).
Examining the world in a healthily childlike spirit, The Poetics includes a little circus, a little performance art, a great deal of play and cheerful desire for experimentation. Philosophy, with plentiful stimulation, is left for the audience to ponder. According to Kautto, the problem of the object has pervaded theatre history and is concensed in every religion. What are the icons or totems of today?
